


Room Without A View

by carolinelamb, Chifuyu



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Extended Universe - Fandom, Pusher (Refn Movies), Trial & Retribution
Genre: #EatTheRare Fest, (To a certain degree), Anal Fingering, Anal Play, Anal Plug, Anal Sex, Collars, Double Penetration, Drug Use, Feminization, First Time, Fluff, Forced Orgasm, Hannigram - Freeform, Homophobic Language, Humiliation, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Masturbation, Mindbreak, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Poor Roberto, Prison, Prison Clichees, Prison Sex, Prostitution, Public Blow Jobs, Public Humiliation, Public Nudity, Public Sex, Rape, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rare Characters, Rare Fandoms, Rare Pairings, Redemption, References to Drugs, Rentboys, Romance, Sex Toys, Shotgunning, Slow Burn, Substance Abuse, Toberto, Verbal Abuse, Verbal Humiliation, Violence, Voyeurism, Writing on the Body, gangrape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-15 19:54:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 40,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8070562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolinelamb/pseuds/carolinelamb, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chifuyu/pseuds/Chifuyu
Summary: These days Roberto has no plans to go anywhere. He makes ends meet and he survives. One can't ask for more. When he meets Tonny, his strange new neighbour, he has no idea how much his life is about to change.





	1. Well I Never Pray But Tonight I'm On My Knees Yeah

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the first chapter of [Chifuyu](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Chifuyu/pseuds/Chifuyu)'s and my collaboration. We both like Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen, madancy, hannibal, hannigram and hannigram aus and we're both lovers of gratuituous, filthy, "we're-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket" porn so it was only a question of time before we teamed up.
> 
> We also have both a love for Roberto Bellini from Trial and Retribution and Tonny from Nicholas Winding Refn's Pusher trilogy.
> 
> If you have watched neither the show nor the movie here a quick rundown:
> 
> Trial and Retribution is a british crime procedural, basically the 1990s Brit version of SVU. Twenty-seven year old looking like fifteen Hugh Dancy made his first tv appearance on this show, playing a seriously messed up, manipulative, not redeemable underage serial killer. Really, the only thing Roberto has going for himself is that he is pretty.
> 
> Tonny is a luckless, thick-as-a-brick skinhead thug who always loses out, until the end when he fails to get the approval of his father he craves so much. The biggest appeal to me is that Tonny is played by the same actor who plays Hannibal. If you watch these two performances side by side it's hard to believe Tonny and Hannibal are the same man. They're both absolutely brilliant but so so different from each other.
> 
> Also I have a long standing redemption kink so I really want these two to get together and sort their shit out and maybe get a happy ending. Or more.
> 
> Please note we'll add other tags as the fic progresses!
> 
> Last but not least, a very big, big in fact enormous shout of gratitude to the marvellous, awesome [Supastag](http://archiveofourown.org/users/findo) for beta-ing! Since English is neither mine nor Chifuyu's mother tongue she had quite a lot of work to do! Thanks for your great work—we love you!
> 
> * * *

_'Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, this life_  
_Try to make ends meet_  
_You're a slave to money then you die_  
_I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down_  
_You know the one that takes you to the places_  
_Where all the veins meet yeah_

(The Verve — The Bittersweet Symphony)

 

“Ok baby, are you gonna cum?”

The man under him huffs, his face red.

“Come on, give it to me, I want your hot cum.”

“Yeah, you little slut, you want it badly, huh?”

Roberto makes appreciative noises while throwing his head back faking sensual frenzy although he’s more than a little exhausted (and also fucking annoyed). He’s been riding this john for thirty minutes already and it’s been a long day. It doesn’t help that, in addition to not being too keen on personal hygiene, the man has a small, thin cock. Certainly nothing to write home about.

“Well, if your cunt wasn’t this loose and sloppy it’d be easier.”

Roberto pensively regards his john’s unshaven, bloated face. He’d like to punch him and watch the blood trickle out of his broken nose, but clenches down onto his cock instead.

“Had two guys before you,” he purrs, determined to end this as quickly as possible. “They both shoved their cocks up my ass.”

The man considers the scenario, licking fat, purplish lips.

“That much of a slut, ey?” he wheezes. His face is an alarming shade of crimson and Roberto has to suppress a giggle.

“You know I love cock. The more the merrier.”

He locks eyes with his client, faking a long, drawn out moan.

“Don’t stop talking. Keep it up.”

The john increases his pace.

By sheer luck he hits Roberto’s spot, not often, just once or twice, but no matter how much he grinds down onto this john’s dick, it’s not enough to make him cum. The man underneath him doesn’t care. His eyes are squeezed shut and he is gripping Roberto’s hips.

When Roberto is about to doze off he suddenly seizes, mumbles “get off me,” and unceremoniously pushes Roberto off his lap. He lands on the floor with a soft thud and a pained wince.

“What the fuck did you do that for?”

“I came, you dumb slut,” he replies, swinging his legs out of the bed, “Don’t want to be inside your dirty hole any longer than necessary.”

He wipes his cock on the sheets before he gets up to put his pants and trousers on.

Roberto gets up slowly, grimacing — even tiny cocks can cause pain when their owners have no fucking clue how to use them — and feeling the stretch.

He’s used to shitty clients. Not everyone is an asshole, but every rent boy pulls a jerk from time to time. It’s a professional risk. And usually he would just let it go. Talking back to a client is never worth the hassle. The old mantra of ‘the customer is always right’’ holds true even in Roberto’s chosen profession. He’s not dumb (not anymore) and if there’s something he has learned it’s which fights to pick. The simple truth is, it’s better not to pick any fights at all if he wants to get paid.

So he has no idea why he hears himself saying, “that will cost you extra.”

The john, already on his way to the door, turns around, flabbergasted by Roberto’s steely tone and insolence.

“What was that, you little shit?”

“I said,” and there’s his inner voice screaming at Roberto to shut up, to let it go, ”this will cost you extra.”

He turns to the man, his gaze blank. “Insulting me, just because you have a fucking tiny prick, that will cost you extra.”

The man is at Roberto’s throat in less than a second, grabbing him by the neck and pushing him down with the whole mass of his bulky body.

“You — how dare you to talk to me like that, are you out of your fucking mind?”

Roberto instantly regrets his loose tongue when the podgy fingers around his neck tighten their hold and make him fight for air. Why can’t he keep his mouth shut? He’ll be bruised for days and unable to work. Which, of course, means he won’t be able to pay rent. It wouldn’t be the first time, but he’d rather avoid letting his landlord and his friends use him for a whole night to make up for the lost money. They love to do fucked up shit just to see how far they can go, and it always ends with Roberto’s spilled blood.

“I’m sorry,” he tries to say, even makes an effort to sound sincere, but the man above him doesn’t listen. He’s pulling Roberto up by his hair and slaps him a few times across his face.

“Are you getting off on that?” he bellows, “you really think it’s clever for a slut like you to talk back to me? Do you have any idea what I could do to you?”

Roberto shakes his head, tears streaming down his face, some of them real, some of them fake, all in hopes of moving the man to pity. His cheeks sting and Roberto can already feel the skin around his left eye swelling. “Please, I’m sorry.”

The guy is nearly frothing. Up this close Roberto can see his oily skin, the enlarged pores. He can smell him too, a sickening mix of onions, booze and rotting teeth.

The man’s piggish eyes scan the room in wrath-induced frenzy and bitter realisation dawns on Roberto when they pause on his carelessly displayed collection of sex toys. With a snarl, the man pushes Roberto down again and takes one of the dildos lying on the bed table.

Without bothering to lube it up, and before Roberto has any chance to twist out of the uncomfortable hold, the john shoves it into his hole. Roberto screams, white-hot pain surging through his body and spreading from between his legs up to the tip of his spine.

“That’ll teach you, you worthless cocksucker,” he hisses as he abuses Roberto’s hole. “That’s what you like, don’t you? That’s why you do it, right? It’s not about the money. I know greedy little cocksluts like you.”

There is enough cum and lube still inside him to slick up the dildo, and soon enough Roberto finds himself pushing back. I cannot like this, he thinks erratically, trying to block out the sickening pleasure coiling in his belly. He feels despair, raging at the weakness of his body as he begins to moan, his eyes rolling up, mouth going slack.

“This is how to shut up stupid whores like you,” the man says, almost softly, and in stark contrast to the merciless manner in which he fucks Roberto with the toy.

Roberto is clawing at the dirty floor now, with his ass pushed up and his back arched into a sinful curve, wailing as he can feel himself clenching rhythmically.

Then suddenly, there’s a noise at the door, the dildo slips out and the man’s hand is gone from his head. Bewildered, Roberto pushes himself up on his elbows, ignoring the pain in his ass, only to see his john being flung across the room like a ragdoll and into the wall behind the bed.

Great, the fucking wall has a fucking crack now.

His bitter thoughts come to a halt when someone lifts him from the ground, two strong arms curling around his waist and shoulders.

“You okay?” a man says in heavily accented English, “You safe now. You okay.”

The man, slap-headed and dressed in a grey Lonsdale sweatshirt, comes slowly into focus as Roberto blinks up at him.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he manages after a few unsuccessful attempts that come out as little more than pained whimpers.

The man grimaces, shakes his head.

“No English,” he says, but then he corrects himself, tilting his head, “Not very good. English not very good.”

Roberto regards him for a moment. Skinheads are always bad news. Homophobic lot. He had a run-in with a few of them once. It ended with the whole gang taking turns at fucking him. Not to indulge in their repressed homosexual urges of course, but to punish little queers like him, to ‘teach him a lesson’. They left him naked in the park, with all sorts of slurs written in permanent marker on his body. His hole had to be stitched afterwards and the fissure didn’t heal properly for weeks.

The man above him blinks lazily. “You okay?”

He has the typical dumb expression of a skinhead: gullible, but dangerous.

“Okay then,” Roberto says, careful not set him off, “can you let me down? Please?”

The man looks at his own arms, as if he has forgotten he’s carrying Roberto, before  his gaze shifts to the bed where the other man lies, unconscious and covered in bits of white plaster. He nods, hauls Roberto over his shoulder as if he weighs nothing at all, and kicks the john off the bed.

Slowly, as if Roberto is a child and not a twenty-year-old man, he sets him down on the bed. He takes off his bomber jacket, takes a crumpled pack of cigs out of his pocket, and offers him one. Roberto shrugs and, never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, plucks one of the cigarettes from the box.

The stranger, after looking at the dirty sheets on the floor, puts the jacket over his shoulders. To his own surprise, Roberto finds he doesn’t mind the unexpected, kind gesture.

When the john on the ground begins to stir, the skinhead pulls him up by the neck and drags him to the entrance like a sack of garbage. With his back turned, Roberto can see the crudely drawn tattoo adorning the man's skull - the word 'respect' etched into the sensitive skin in bold, black letters - and raises a brow. A skinhead wearing a tattoo like that? Talk of irony.  
  
In the end, it's none of Roberto's business and there are different, more important matters to attend to.

“Wait,” he says, letting the jacket slip off his shoulders, “Search his damn pockets, would you?”

The skin doesn’t understand, looks at him like a patient doberman.

“Fucking Christ!”

Roberto gets up and walks over to the two, kneels down beside the half-unconscious man and briskly goes through his pockets, cigarette hanging from his lips. He finds the wallet, takes out the cards and tosses them to the skin, but helps himself to the wad of cash. Men like him always carry lots of cash. Before the skin can open the door to get rid of him, Roberto raises his hand and he freezes.

Very much like a well-trained dog, Roberto thinks.

He searches the john’s front pockets too, finds a condom, a business card with a phone number on it, and — bingo — a fat little envelope of coke. In the meantime, the skin has found the man’s gun.

“No,” Roberto instructs him patiently, “put that back. That only means trouble. We don’t want trouble, do we?”

Skinhead clearly doesn’t get it.

Roberto takes the gun and sticks it into the man’s front pockets.

“What…,” the john mumbles, trying to grip his head.

“Shhh,” Roberto hushes him, “you’re fucking lucky you’re still alive. We don’t want trouble with your gang, we don’t want trouble with you, so you’ll just go and never come back, k?”

The man stares up at the skinhead who grins down at him and Roberto can’t help but notice the rows of yellowed, weirdly small, sharp teeth.

The skinhead nods again, more grim now, then drags the man out of the door and tosses him down the stairs. Afterwards, he turns around and Roberto half expects the skin to demand some kind of reward for rescuing him from this shitbag of a client. A blowjob perhaps. Or maybe the skin wants to be fucked.

He remains standing in the door, sticking his large hands into the front pouch of his sweatshirt, suddenly shy.

Roberto tilts his head. “Hey,” he purrs, reaching out towards him. “Come here.”

Without protest, he shuffles closer, ridiculously obedient.

“You’re a good man, aren’t you?” Roberto coos.

The man blinks, not understanding.

“What’s your name then, luv.”

He shakes his head, grins stupidly. Roberto wonders if the man is a bit simple-minded.

“Your name,” he repeats, louder this time, and points at his own chest, “I’m Roberto.”

Finally the skinhead gets the hint.

“Tonny,” he says, and his voice is hoarse. He takes one of his hands out of his pouch and points at his chest, mirroring Roberto’s earlier move. “I’m Tonny.”

“So Tonny,” Roberto says, bestowing a lazy smile on the skinhead, “you’re not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed are you?”

The man furrows his brows, looking like a kicked puppy as the meaning of Roberto’s words registers. For a split second, Roberto expects his expression to shift into one of anger and he internally curses his big mouth. He can’t handle another beating, not so soon after that whole disaster with his client.

But instead of fists raining down on him, Roberto’s cockiness only earns him a frown.

“Not from here,” the skin says, then shrugs.

Well, his thick accent makes it obvious he’s “not from here”, not from Britain at least and Roberto would bet all of his newly-acquired money he’s no legal immigrant either.

He may have horrible impulse control, but his excellent instincts make up for it most of the time. Roberto smells an opportunity here.

“So,” he drawls, pointedly casual, not that he actually has to try being subtle with this poor bugger. “What brought you to the island?”

“Trouble,” Tonny mumbles after some time, hands still awkwardly stuffed into his sweatshirt’s pouch, his eyes cast downward.

Of course. Trouble. What else? Roberto stubs out the remains of his cigarette in the ashtray which shares space with the sex toys on the bed table and gives Tonny the once-over. He’s tall, with broad shoulders, long legs, and he stubbornly refuses to meet Roberto’s eyes. It’s annoying for a second, until he realizes Tonny is avoiding looking at his naked body.

Fucking hell, this guy sure is something else.

“What are you? Some kind of blushing Jane Austen heroine?”

Tonny doesn’t reply. It’s pretty unlikely he knows Jane Austen.

With a sigh, Roberto gets up, legs still weak, thighs sticky with cum, and grabs his discarded trousers. He puts them on, not bothering with underwear, and turns back to Tonny.

Tonny does lift his gaze then and Roberto can’t help but notice the curious amber shade of his eyes and his high cheekbones. He’s surprisingly attractive and Roberto catches himself thinking that it wouldn’t be too bad sucking this guy’s dick as a small token of appreciation. And if it makes him feel guilty for using poor, abused Roberto like that, all the better.

“I guess I owe you now,” he purrs, fluttering his long lashes. “For rescuing me from that asshole.”

He pushes against Tonny’s chest until the back of the man’s knees hit the frame of the bed and he flops down onto the rumpled sheets. Roberto gets between his legs, not giving Tonny a chance to think of the English words that could properly convey any possible protest, and presses his nose into the prominent bulge of his crotch.

With an ease born from experience, Roberto unzips the worn out jeans, reaches underneath the hem of the simple boxers and takes out Tonny’s cock. It’s big, even in its flaccid state, but Roberto has had bigger.

“Wow,” he gasps nonetheless, as if he has never seen a prick that huge in his life. “Fucking incredible.”

Tonny’s reaction is less incredible.

Before Roberto can get his mouth anywhere near his cock, he’s pushed back. Tonny jumps to his feet, dick dangling from the confines of his trousers before he hastily stuffs it back into his boxers and zips up.

“No!” he stutters. “Sorry. I like pussy.”

He takes a few steps backwards, putting some distance between himself and Roberto, nearly slipping on the dildo on the floor. His jaw goes slack at the sight, as if he only now realized what Roberto has been doing with his john prior to his intervention.

Roberto rolls his eyes. “Alright, mate. Whatever you say. Just wanted to be nice to you for kicking that scumbag out of my flat.”

He flops down on his unmade bed and leans against the adjacent wall. Plaster dust crumbles onto his shoulders. Tonny is still standing in the middle of the room, swaying slightly as if he doesn’t know whether to leave or to stay.

Roberto makes the decision for him by waving his hand in a dismissive gesture, the other brushing through his unruly curls.

“If you don’t want a blow job then leave. I got things to do.” Mainly getting clean again and preparing for his next client.

Aw, Tonny’s confused. It shows in the way his eyes widen and his pale eyebrows shoot up in obvious question but he doesn’t say anything, just throws one last look at the mess that is Roberto’s living room slash bedroom.

“Shut the door on your way out, you hear me?” he calls after Tonny as the man shuffles away.

When the sound of the door clicking shut reaches Roberto’s ear, he sighs and sinks into the mass of pillows and blankets, already lighting another fag.

His ass hurts, his throat is raw and his flat is an absolute mess.

What a shit day.


	2. I Ain't Wasting No More Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One of my favourite things about us writing this story is that it's taking place in the very early 2000s, so I get ample opportunity to get nostalgic and dig out my old songlists.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah there is more. Again, many many thanks to our beta [Supastag—you rock and we love you!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/findo/pseuds/supastag)
> 
> Dedicated to the many incredibly lovely fannibals we met at the BTRD! We see family!
> 
> * * *

_I see alone we stand, together we fall apart_  
_Yeah I think I'll be alright_  
_I'm working so I won't have to try so hard_  
_Tables they turn sometimes_

(Strokes — Someday)

 

Tonny, as it turns out, has moved into the apartment right next to his. 

The old neighbours were alright, two art students who had chucked Roberto weed every now and then. It’s a shame that these days are apparently over. 

Tonny doesn't exactly look like someone who grows cute little marihuana plants—more like snorting speed while listening to Screwdriver.

“Nice shiner,” Frankie, one of the boys he hangs out with, comments, pulling him out of his thoughts. Roberto eyes him with hardly suppressed amusement as he performs his usual ritual: Frankie watches Ivy and Danielle walk up to a car, talk to the driver and then get in. Ivy, the alleged redhead—it’s a wig, but she prefers it to her actual dishwater blonde hair—glances back at the two of them and waves. They both return the gesture, Roberto not quite as enthusiastic as Frankie.

“See ya later! We’ll be waiting!” Frankie calls after the girls.

The john, who barely acknowledged them, drives off with the girls. Frankie goes so far as to step on the street, so the john thinks he’s committing his license plate to memory.

He is sweet like that, protective and loyal. A john might feel less inclined to do fucked up shit, like beating a girl up, if they think someone has seen their license plate or remembers their face. Roberto knows the girls, the young ones, find comfort in that belief, maybe even courage. Frankie is happy to pretend to be their boyfriend or pimp. The girls appreciate it and for most Frankie is a cherished friend, one of the few a prostitute can have when working in their business. Sometimes it comes in handy, especially when they need a place to crash. Ivy was one of the girls who let Frankie stay at her flat for a night, grudgingly accepting Roberto as well. 

Roberto doesn’t care about friends, not like other people, but it’s good to keep peace with them and he doesn’t alienate them on purpose. Frankie is more idealistic than him, still, but as soon as Frankie has worked the street as long as Roberto, he won’t give a fuck anymore either.

He likes him though. Frankie is decent enough, an enthusiastic bottom like him and generally good company. At least once a week they get hired together: there are quite a few men who like to be dp’ed. It’s an issue they both like to complain jokingly about when they’re getting sloshed - most of their johns want to be buggered, even though Frankie and Roberto both prefer to bottom. On the other hand, tops are a rare commodity hence better paid. It's not always easy to get it up.

Tonight, it doesn’t look like they will be getting paid anytime soon. The cars pass by, some slowing down for a moment, but despite Frankie and Roberto’s best efforts to attract their drivers, they speed up again. 

Slowly but surely it’s getting frustrating, but their patience is rewarded when an older woman in a dark blue Mercedes turns around the corner, rolls down the window and Roberto and Frankie immediately step out on the street. She’s a popular regular because she tips generously and they just need to sit with her, eat the food and drink the wine she orders, and chat. In the beginning she often picked Frankie, but lately Ivy and another girl Roberto doesn’t know the name of, have become her favourites. Frankie is intensely jealous so he doesn’t waste a second.

“Hey! Hi, Lydia,” he greets, and she answers with a shy smile.

“Frankie, you look beautiful!” 

Fluttering his lashes, Frankie steps closer to bend down and kiss both her cheeks. “Looking for someone?” he asks, voice pointedly light.

“I was wondering if Ivy is working tonight,” the woman says. She’s holding tightly onto the steering wheel, her whole body tense with nervous energy.

“She just left, probably won’t be back for another two hours,” Frankie lies, “but I’m free.”

Lydia nods as if she’s entertaining the idea but then pulls up her shoulders, looking a bit guilty. “I only wanted to give her something, but I can come by later this week.”

It’s a shame, but Frankie knows when he has no business and steps away from the car.

After a moment of contemplation, Lydia rummages in the handbag lying on the passenger seat and hands him fifty quid. 

“Look, say hello to Ivy. Go and get yourself a drink,” she pinches Frankie’s cheek and only then notices Roberto standing on the curb behind him.

“Roberto,” she greets him, but her smile is less sincere with him, “business going well?” 

Roberto shrugs. “Can’t complain.”

Her attention shifts immediately back to Frankie and her expression when she looks at him is much warmer. “Take care of yourself and the girls,” she tells Frankie, then drives off without another word to Roberto.

“Huh,” Frankie muses, looking after the shiny Mercedes, “she can’t stand you.”

Roberto shrugs again. “No one can stand me. I’m too beautiful to be liked.”

Frankie grins and slaps his bum. “Come on, beautiful, let’s have a break.”

“Watson’s?”

Frankie contemplates the crumpled £50 note in his hand. 

“The Brigadier,” he decides, “let’s treat ourselves today. And I feel like having that pint right _now_ , not in fifteen minutes. First one is on me.”

A night spent at the The Brigadier is a bit of an adventure, compared to the good old Watson pub, because it’s often frequented by mobsters. Obviously the staff talks that rumour up quite a bit, yet the few times Roberto walked in there, he did spot one or two gentlemen in expensive suits, hiding handguns under dark jackets.

When they arrive Roberto makes a beeline for the bar, where he can see and be seen by people, maybe even find a client or two. Frankie, always content with following Roberto’s lead, doesn’t argue so they make themselves comfortable on the bar stools and chat a bit with the bartender who is new to both the job and London. Frankie thinks he’s hot. Roberto only rolls his eyes and scans the relatively thin Wednesday night crowd over the rim of his glass.

There’s a boisterous group of men who look too conspicuously casual not to be fake, with reddish faces and ginger hair, checked shirts, no ties and trainers. They’re gathered around the only woman in the group and are probably competing to take her home.

The bunch is loud, obnoxious and probably tangled up in illegal activities. Roberto knows two of the men. They're brothers and the joint owners of the Diamond Queen, a night club he sometimes visits to pick up clients. His work there is tolerated as long as he pays the fees. It's a ridiculously high sum, but it's safer than walking the streets all night. Apart from that, often enough the brothers send him the one or other client to take care of. Sometimes they ask him questions afterwards, and Roberto tells them what they told him. People like to talk in bed. Their tongues are more loose after a good fuck. At least on one occasion Roberto’s information helped to prevent one gang member betraying the brothers. One hand washes the other. 

Even when work is slow, there are enough men and women willing to buy Roberto drinks, so more often than not he finds himself hanging out at the club’s bar.

It’s a coincidence that the brothers are out tonight—usually they hang out in their luxurious private lounge in the basement of their club.

Just when he has made himself comfortable he catches sight of another man standing with the group. He recognises that dumb tattoo at once. 

He still looks like an overgrown puppy, with his wide eyes and crooked teeth, his lips curled into a hesitant grin. Roberto can't hear what the men are talking about, but it’s obviously at Tonny’s expense. All but him laugh loudly and open-mouthed, one of them clapping him on the back while his smile threatens to fall.

Tonny has no fucking clue what the joke was about and just went along with it because he wants to be part of the group. It's pathetic, almost pitiful.

"Hey, what you're looking at?" Frankie’s voice pulls him out of his thoughts.

Roberto blinks, then shrugs. "Nothing." He hops off his stool with effortless grace and grabs his half-empty glass of vodka tonic from the counter. "I'm gonna say hello to someone. I’ll be back in a moment."

Frankie doesn't protest. He's happy being left alone with the mediocre-looking bartender and doesn't waste a second before he starts flirting. He'll probably let that guy fuck him without pay later that night, Roberto suspects. What an idiot.

He makes his way over to the group of mobsters without wasting another thought on Frankie and his romanticised inclinations.

The smell of booze and fags grows stronger the closer he gets, which is remarkable considering they're in a pub that inevitably reeks of cheap alcohol and sweating men.

Alfie, the younger of the two brothers, notices him first and his smile brightens, revealing too straight, too white teeth, as he winks Roberto over.

Roberto sways his hips and flutters his lashes as he steps close enough to curl his arms around the man in greeting. Alfie is the more liberal, more easy-going of the duo and doesn't think much about the picture he makes with a young boy hanging off him in a pub. He likes that about Alfie. The man doesn't pretend not to fuck pretty boys and couldn't care less about what a bunch of drunkards have to say about that.

His brother Harvey is more reserved. He tolerates his brother’s antics and he too would never refuse Roberto's services, but he's not one for public displays of affection. All Roberto gets in greeting is a curt nod of acknowledgment.

"Well, well, who do we have here? Missed me that much, Roberto?" Alfie asks, good-natured humour reverberating in every syllable. He's drunk and obviously in a splendid mood. The woman he has tried to seduce is forgotten, cast aside for an easier and more familiar target. 

He joins in on the laughter, but keeps his eyes on Tonny. The skin looks like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights, but at least he's clever enough not to say anything, just looks at Roberto with thinly-veiled confusion.

"Always, Alfie. You know that. When was the last time you paid me a visit, huh?"

His words are playful, but the accusation is an honest one. It has been some time since Alfie bought him and it's frustrating. The club owner gives generous tips on top of Roberto's actual pay and—unlike most of the men Roberto has been with—insists on him coming as well whenever they are together. He gets off on the thought of being able to make all his partners come. It's his kink, but Roberto has seen worse.

"Oh you know how it is. Work, always work. Right, Harvey?"

A rough grumble is Harvey's only answer, but Alfie doesn’t let it discourage him.

"Today though, we're celebrating. A little welcoming party for our new friend Tonny here." Alfie reaches out with one hand and slaps Tonny on the cheek. He endures it without complaint. "He's from Denmark and needs some help getting settled in London."

"So of course you took him under your wing," Roberto concludes.

The help Alfie and Harvey offer never comes without a price and Roberto wonders if Tonny is aware or if he’s really as naive and dumb as he looks.

Well, not his problem.

He sizes Tonny up, just as he would do with somebody he sees for the very first time, and extends his hand.

_Come on, you twat, take it._

Tonny does, after what feels like an eternity. His grip is surprisingly firm, Roberto has to admit, and warm to the touch.

"Nice to meet you, Tonny," Roberto purrs. He caresses the name with the tip of his tongue, the way he would lick a drop of precum off a nice, stiff cock. He's very much aware of the effect his sweet voice and angelic face have on others and he's not above abusing that knowledge shamelessly.

Tonny twitches, his breath catching in his throat. He pulls his hand away a tad too quickly, as if he has been burned. 

From what Roberto has gathered, Tonny could be the poster child for the repressed homosexual. He’s known men like him all his life. They would laugh at him, the small, girly boy, the pretty boy, the sissy boy, but later they’d call him. In the night they’d turn up on his doorstep, fists shoved into their pockets, red-faced, wanting, clumsily groping his ass. 

_“Wanna hang out with me?” “About what I said before—I’m sorry.” “Wanna grab a drink with me?”_ A million different variations of the same sentences. 

Roberto would let them touch him anyway but he would not delude himself. Even when they were fucking into him with abandon, moaning how good he felt, how tight he was, come the next day they’d hang out with their mates again, pretending not to see or know him. 

"N-nice to meet you," Tonny mutters and averts his eyes.

"Oh, he's shy. Show some mercy, Roberto," Alfie whispers in his ear and then, louder: "You like our sweet Roberto, Tonny? Wanna fuck him? It's on me. A little present to go along with your welcome party."

Everyone laughs as if Alfie has made a hilarious joke and Tonny joins in. He tries very hard to fit in and fails miserably at it. His whole posture is rigid, his body tense, ready to bolt, like an unruly horse, and his eyes keep darting to the nearest exit.

Someone pushes Tonny forward and Roberto uses his chance to grind against the man, cup his balls and hear him gasp. 

“Jesus fucking Christ, look at this cockslut,” Alfie says. Harvey only smirks.

Tonny grips Roberto’s shoulders, puts one large, heavy hand onto his jaw, then gently pushes him away.

“Sorry,“ he says, and grins his stupid grin again, “He is no girl.”

Alfie and two of his mates start laughing hysterically.

“Listen, mate” Alfie says in a faux forbearing tone, “Roberto’s little cunt is tighter than any pussy you’ve ever fucked.”

Tonny nods and grins but makes no move to pull Roberto back to his side. 

“He’s my fucking present to you,” Alfie hisses, his already limited patience running thin, “don’t be fucking rude.”

Roberto glances at Harvey who looks annoyed. He’s not a fan of scenes.

Tonny might not understand every word, but he knows when he’s pissed off someone he shouldn’t have pissed off. 

“Ey,” he says, in a placating tone, then takes Roberto’s hand and pulls him against his broad chest before sitting back down, his lap now full with Roberto. At least he’s not a complete idiot, good for him.

“Tight cunt, yes?” he says, grabs a handful of Roberto’s butt and squeezes.

That seems to mollify Alfie, at least for the moment, and he empties his drink. “How many cocks can you take, luv?” he asks as he turns to Roberto.

Roberto grins up at him. “You know I can take three.”

“I’ll fuck you til you can’t walk,” Tonny suddenly blurts out, then looks around expectantly. Over his shoulder, Roberto looks at him with disbelief etched into his pretty features. What the fuck is wrong with you? he mouths.

He’s half-tempted to grind the heel of his hand into Tonny’s crotch before he can spout any more nonsense when a sudden eruption of laughter makes him halt.

The whole table is guffawing and Roberto can hardly believe it. Even Harvey shows a rare smile.

There is a commotion at the entrance. More groups of drunken men spill in, demanding their drinks in loud, drunken voices, already slightly slurred. Roberto should really get to work, it’s peak hour. Five or six guys join Alfie. There’s no room left at the table so they just stand around swaying, laughing at whatever Alfie says.

Roberto grabs a shot of vodka from the table and downs it, then another. Before emptying the third one he passes it to Tonny instead who takes it gratefully.

A tall man in a disgusting green tweed suit pushes through the crowd and, as soon as he has reached their table, slaps Alfie’s shoulder. 

For a second everyone around him goes still.

No one ever just touches Alfie like that. Most of the time, he’s all jovial and hilarious but if someone doesn’t show him the respect he thinks he’s entitled to it gets very nasty very quickly. In 1997 he cut someone’s eye out because they made a joke about the dish Alfie had ordered. Harvey once told Roberto the story over breakfast. He had ordered macaroni cheese in a very fancy, expensive five star restaurant in...New York? Roberto doesn’t recall the details but that story was confirmed by several sources. And anyway, no one who has seen Alfie in one of his moods has any reason to doubt it.

When Alfie turns around, cold disbelief on his face, Roberto holds his breath. From the corner of his eye he can see Harvey quietly slipping his hand underneath his jacket, ready to pull his gun.

“Fucking hell, Dave, whose cock did you suck to get out early,” Alfie exclaims, laughing.

Roberto blinks. Behind him, Tonny exhales. A few of the lads exchange glances before the tension evaporates and they laugh and exchange hugs with the man called Dave.

“They let me out a week ago,” Dave grumbles, “Got a few jobs here and there.”

“I thought you got ten years,” Harvey leans forward, sipping his pint. Roberto stares at that little bit of wetness above Harvey’s upper lip, just so he doesn’t have to look at Dave.

He shouldn’t have had those shots, he tells himself. It made him sick. He should go.

Tonny doesn’t hold him back. Roberto grips the edge of the table and turns around, but before he can slip away into the crowd, a large hand fists his curls and pulls him back.

“Hello there,” Dave says. “Long time no see.”

“Dave,” Roberto manages weakly.

“Thought you might know each other,” Alfie muses.

“I need to go,” Roberto mumbles. He can feel his own heartbeat in his ears. He can't breathe. It's as if something sucked the air out of the room. 

Dave says something to him, and Roberto looks dizzily at his lips moving. Behind him he can see Harvey mouthing words he doesn’t understand. All he hears is a deafening roaring noise filling his mind and if he doesn’t get out of here soon he will crumble to the ground, will break apart into a thousand pieces.

Using all of his strength, he manages to pull out of Dave’s grip.

“I need to go,” he says again, aware his voice is failing him. In blind, feverish panic, he pushes against Dave and past him. Somehow he makes it through the crowd and finally, finally reaches the pub’s doors.


	3. The Trick Is To Keep Breathing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay but here comes chapter 3. 
> 
> Also important PSA: Please. Read. The. Warnings. 
> 
> Especially with chaptered fics, warnings can change after the first update. Chifuyu and I have a clear idea of our fic but things might still get more explicit or graphic than originally intended. 
> 
> If you see tags you're uncomfortable with, do not continue to read. 
> 
> Again many thanks to our beta extraordinaire [Supastag](http://archiveofourown.org/users/findo/pseuds/supastag)!
> 
> I went back to edit some parts so all remaining errors are mine!
> 
> * * *

_Now everything's about to fall apart_  
_I won't be the one who's going to let you down_  
_Maybe you'll get what you want this time around_  
_I won't be the one who's going to let you down_

(Garbage – The Trick Is To Keep Breathing)

****

London 1998

The first days, weeks, even months were, despite what Roberto had been told, not hard. At the prison gate he received his identification number. They gave him a sweater, pants, trainers. He shared a cell with three other inmates who kept a careful distance from him.

He was not afraid. He knew Damon’s name meant something in here. Despite his slight build, despite his pretty face, men would not approach him, they wouldn’t dare to. He and Tony were ruling their block. Displeasing them meant displeasing Damon Morten and no one wanted to take that risk. Everyone, including the older inmates, treated him and Tony with respect.

In the first weeks Roberto observed prison life with detached curiosity. It was a temporary inconvenience, maybe even something like a little adventure. Any day now, Damon would get them out of here. Obviously mistakes had happened. They should have checked if that Marilyn bitch was really dead instead of tossing her out of the van but who knew old whores would be so resilient. Damon told them about his smart lawyer and for a while it seemed impossible anyone would believe that witness. Tony, always more prone to panicking, had urged Damon to have her killed but Damon had waved him off. 

Damon was acquitted, just like he had said. 

“If it’s the word of a woman against a man,” he had once patiently explained to the gathered boys, “people, even other women, will believe the man. Remember that. Women are liars.”

The prosecution made the mistake of relying heavily on her statements and when her testimony was torn apart by the defence, not much was left. In court, Marilyn broke down sobbing, and Damon watched her, amused. The carefully handpicked jurors were uncomfortable, and when she admitted to continuing her line of work, the air of hostility in the court room was palpable.

Damon shot Roberto a quick glance as if to remind him of his words. 

Later they had been celebrating with contraband, a bottle of vodka and a couple of joints, a bit of speed. It was just a question of time until they would be free as well and the lack of worry made them exuberant. 

Unlike Tony Roberto didn’t befriend other inmates. There was no doubt in Roberto’s mind that Tony would end up back in prison for something else sooner or later. He’d always overestimate his luck, his cleverness, his strength and, in the end, get caught. 

Roberto often felt like a changeling. He was not like his dim-witted brother, but he was not like his father either, a weak-minded, soft man who still loved the woman who had left him to bring up two boys alone. Often enough he would look at the two of them and wonder how he could be so different.

Then Damon was brought in a second time, in the middle of the night. 

Roberto saw him only twice, once from afar as he was immediately led into an isolated cell block. The smoothness of his movements was gone. He was shuffling like an old man. Tony told him he was on suicide watch. The wife, someone said. Roberto asked, what about the wife but got no answer. 

As a category A offender Damon was to be transferred to Belmarsh a few days later. That was the second and last time Roberto saw him. He was dressed in grey pants and a sweater. He looked medicated, out of it. Tony was fretting behind him, cursing, but Roberto just glanced through the bars and the mesh wire looking at the man he had loved like a father. A guard offered Damon a cig and he took it, cupped his hand when the guard lit it. The guard patted his shoulder, and Damon wiped his nose with his sleeve like a child. Then the van to take him to Belmarsh arrived and cut off Roberto’s view of him.

Tony cried a lot. He cowered in a corner in his cell, trembling. Without Damon there was no hope. Roberto, however, still fought. He changed his story several times, asked for deals, threatened, lied. He would not go down like this. He tried to blame his brother. He pleaded insanity, tried to convince the court he had been co-erced, blackmailed, brainwashed. 

Eventually his tears moved the judges. It could not be proven how much he'd been truly involved. In the ensuing mess after Damon's arrest everyone accused everyone. Confessions were recanted, and luckily for Roberto and Tony, mistakes were made. Tony was not as skilled in manipulating the judges and was sentenced to twenty years. Roberto, however, managed to get eight years for conspiring to obstruct justice. It was still a lot, but his lawyer told him he had avoided two life sentences. And with a bit of luck they would get him out within three, maybe two years. He didn’t look like his brother, foreign, dark-haired, dark-eyed. He looked young, vulnerable. He looked like a public school boy with his soft brown curls and blue eyes. 

A few days after the verdict Tony and Roberto were woken up in the middle of the night, bundled into a serco van and together with a three other nervous looking guys transferred to Feltham.

His brother sobbed into his prison-issued sleeping bag like a child during the entire ride, talked to himself, growled like a wounded animal. Roberto regarded him with cold disgust. 

He had been in a daze the last days, but in the van to Feltham, staring out the window at the passing landscape, he realised that all of this was really happening. He wouldn’t get out and continue his old life, wouldn’t go to university and become a banker. Until now he had viewed all of this as a temporary inconvenience. Something he could tell his mates about in a few weeks when he was free once more: “Hey, remember when I was in prison?”

Tony started banging his head against the window glass when the red brick building of Feltham came into view. Only when one of the guards came to the back to look after him did he quieten down.

The van came to a slow halt and Roberto could see the outer gates opening, the royal emblem on the front wall, uniformed guards outside, smoking cigarettes while holding plastic cups of coffee in their gloved hands, peering blankly into the van.

They waited until another guard came and uncuffed them from the seats. Four other guards were waiting for them outside and Roberto watched in silence as papers were signed and forms were exchanged. 

After a while, a woman led them to a side door and their meagre possessions were checked in: the clothes they had worn when they were arrested, a bit of cash, bills and coins, keys, all in plastic bags. Roberto signed the form confirming the items, then he and Tony were led through another door, down a hallway and into a small office.

The officer sitting behind the MDF desk didn’t even look up when Tony and Roberto entered.

“Antonio and Roberto Bellini, convicted for multiple accounts of murder and obstruction of justice respectively. Seems like you got up to some very fucked-up shit, boys,” she finally said, flipping carelessly through their files.

She didn’t seem particularly surprised, nor shocked at their crimes. On the contrary, she emitted an aura of absolute calm and indifference in the face of Tony’s and Roberto’s debauchery.

When she finally deigned to look up, her steel-grey eyes were entirely on Roberto.

“A pretty one, huh? I hope you like being the centre of attention, angel-face, because you’re going to get a whole lot of it the next few months.”

Before Roberto got a chance to ask what the bloody hell she meant with that, the officer slammed two pieces of loose paper onto the desk, in front of the two boys.

“These are your visiting order numbers. You’ll get three of those each month. Each number can be used for one visit. Hand in a booking form to the office if you want a visiting slot, or call your visitor and give them the VO number so they can find a free slot to visit. You forget to hand in the form or call your visitor?” She shrugged. “Well, your loss.”

“How do phone calls work?” Tony, the idiot, interrupted. “I want to talk to my dad!”

Roberto doubted their dad even wanted to talk to them, not after everything they had done. It would have been wise to call their lawyer instead, but he didn’t voice his concerns. Tony was not particularly susceptible to logical arguments when he was agitated after all.

The female officer had called him pretty and angel-face, if Roberto played his cards right then maybe he could threaten her with a sexual harassment lawsuit.

“You can call your father at the appropriate times and once you’ve gotten your PIN. There will be money for an emergency call on it. It expires after two weeks, so better make it count. Afterwards you can put credit on the PIN at the canteen - the prison shop. Got it?”

“Yes, thank you,” Roberto replied politely. Damon would have made short work of her, he thought.

“Wh-what? What am I supposed to do?”

Roberto shot his brother a quick glance. Even after all these years, the sheer magnitude of Tony’s thick-headedness never failed to surprise him.

Judging from the officer’s raised brow and bland stare, Roberto wasn’t the only one to think so.

“Anyway,” she said, eyes still on Roberto. “You’ll learn. Ask your cell-mates if you have questions. Now get out of here.”

Tony opened his mouth to protest, but Roberto grabbed him by the arm and pulled him from his chair as he stood, bidding the officer goodbye with a curt nod of his head.

He didn’t get it. Of course he didn’t, but Roberto wouldn’t risk any trouble on his first day just because his brother was two points short of having the same IQ as a fucking donkey.

Tony screamed and raved when they were separated and led to different cells, demanding to see his lawyer. Somehow he had been under the impression they would share a cell, but the prison administration had obviously other ideas. 

Roberto assumed Tony wouldn't survive a week in here if he continued to act like this. He had already shown weakness in front of the other inmates who watched his emotional breakdown with detached amusement, shouting encouragement from time to time, eager for any distraction from their usual routine. It was probably a question of time until they would start picking on him.

Roberto didn't even look when they dragged Tony away. His tears and pretty face had helped him in court but they wouldn't help him here, so he forced his features into a mask of indifference, gritted his teeth and stepped into the cell that would be his home for the next months, if not years.

The guard who had brought him here didn't even bother to introduce him to his cell mates. He took enough time to uncuff Roberto before he sauntered off without another word, shutting the door with a resounding clank.

Rubbing at his sore wrists, Roberto eyed the three men he now shared the restricted space with: all of them older than him, if not by much, burly and eyeing him with open suspicion.

Two of them had been busy playing a game of poker, the cards handmade and not of the highest quality. The third was lying on the bed, reading a dog-eared book, the title illegible.

Roberto didn't dare speak. What was he supposed to say after all? He wondered how much he was to reveal. Someone had warned him of saying too much and advised him to stick to his story about obstruction of justice. 

As it turned out, nobody expected him to say anything. The two poker players gave him the once-over before putting their heads together once more, talking in hushed voices, only throwing Roberto the occasional glance.

He suppressed a shiver. They stared at him as if he was nothing but a piece of meat.

"Now look at that!"

The sudden remark made Roberto twitch. 

"Finally some fresh blood in here. What's your name, lad?"

Roberto scrunched up his nose as the guy moved right into his space, entirely unbothered by the awkward proximity.

"I asked you a question, boy."

Boy, Roberto thought contemptuously. The guy was maybe five or six years his senior, otherwise, he wouldn't have been here in Feltham. He was also obviously the leader of the group. Meaning that it would be wise not to get on his bad side.

"Roberto. Roberto Bellini. And you are?"

His big mouth earned him a bellowing laugh and the man clicked his tongue in obvious amusement.

"A feisty one, didn't have that in a while. My name's Owen. You better learn it. These two are Dave and Charlie," he explained as he pointed to the back of the cell, never taking his eyes off Roberto. 

He was trying to intimidate Roberto, that much was obvious and Roberto didn't like it one bit. Though he'd go along for now. There was no need to make enemies on his very first day here, better play it safe.

"So," he said, feigning hesitation as he inspected what would be his home for the foreseeable future. "I guess this is mine then?"

He nodded at the bunk bed, the lower mattress still unoccupied.

Owen followed his gaze and shrugged. "Sure thing, kiddo, can't see any other free bed here. Except of course if you want to share the bed with Dave or Charlie. Must get lonely in there when you never get any ass."

One of the two — Roberto had no idea who was Charlie and who was Dave — gave Owen the finger, but didn't dare argue with him.

"Thanks," Roberto mumbled, already making his way over to the bed. "I'll be fine on my own."

When he placed his bag onto the bed, Owen grabbed it, leaning over Roberto.

“Let’s see what you’ve got here,” he said, shoving Roberto aside. 

He pulled out the pillow, packs of instant noodles, chewing gum and a stack of white t-shirts. 

Discarding the t-shirts on the floor, he took the instant noodles.

Roberto felt himself hyperventilating. This was an important moment, he knew — if he let the other get away with it, he’d set a precedent. He needed people to respect him. 

The other guy was bulky, muscular though. His reddish knuckles alone were huge, his wrists as thick as Roberto's upper arms. Roberto didn’t think he’d stand a chance with him.

“Come on, Owen, don’t be like that,” the third man, the one on the cot, said, without looking up from his book. 

“Don’t mess with me, I’m in a shit mood today,” groused Owen. He rummaged in Roberto’s bag and found a milky way bar which he also took.

Roberto had been looking forward to it, and he felt a mixture of disappointment, loss and anger. He couldn't afford to act on it, not now he couldn't.

Roberto bent down to pick up the shirts. Owen stepped on them. Behind him, the guy seated at the table laughed.

“Fucking hell, leave the kid alone.”

“Are you a girl or a boy?” Owen asked, then without waiting for Roberto’s answer said, “you look like a little bitch to me.”

What would Damon do, he thought — not the broken, defeated Damon he saw last, but the charismatic leader who years ago had opened his eyes to the world, had recognised him, seen him for what he was.

Damon would not go down in an useless fight. He’d be smarter. He’d be diplomatic, then wait for the right moment.

Roberto let go of the t-shirts and straightened, backing away. Owen grinned, then lunged for him, grabbing his throat. Panic rose in Roberto and he tried to pry Owen’s hand off. Then, with a blink of an eye, it was gone. His legs, feeling like jelly, gave under him, and he slid down the wall. After a moment he heard a thud and saw Owen a few metres away, curled into a fetal position groaning. Someone helped him up.

It was the man who’d been on the cot reading.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” he said, “Owen’s not a bad guy, but he’s got a fucked up temper.”

He tried to strangle me, Roberto thought, but said nothing. Dave collected the t-shirts and put them into Roberto’s shaking hands, then went to the table and got the instant noodles and the milky way bar.

“Here you go,” he said, “I know this must be tough for you. It’s your first time, isn’t it?”

Roberto nodded, realising with horror that he was about to cry, like a child. 

Dave squeezed his arm. 

“Hey,” he whispered, so Owen, who was still quietly groaning, couldn’t hear him, “do me a favour. Whatever you do here, don’t cry. Can you do that?”

Roberto nodded numbly.

“You’re smart, I can see that,” Dave said, “so you’ll understand, that showing weakness here is a bad idea, right?”

Roberto nodded again, ridiculously grateful for Dave’s soothing voice. 

“Ok, I know it sounds like bullshit, but it’s not so bad. The first week is shit. But it’ll be ok. You’ll be ok.”

Dave clapped his shoulder, then led him to his cot, where Roberto sat down, clutching his instant noodles. In the back of the cell, Owen finally got onto his knees, then stood up slowly.

Dave made himself comfortable on the bunk bed, right next to Roberto. 

“So what you’re in for?” he asked.

“Obstruction of justice — my brother did some fucked up shit and I lied for him,” Roberto said. “We got caught.” 

“You did this for your brother, yeah?” Dave mused. “That’s … commendable. We have to look out for family. That’s important.” 

He nodded. 

“Well, I did some fucked up shit too,” Dave admitted after a moment of silence. 

Roberto wasn’t surprised, but secretly wondered what someone who seemed so gentle would be in for. 

“I killed someone,” Dave revealed. 

He studied Roberto’s face while speaking and Roberto couldn’t help but feel like this was a test nobody had bothered to warn him about.

“Okay,” he simply said.

Dave continued to eye him, neither approval nor damnation visible in his calm gaze, “I didn’t wanna do it. Just wanted to shut him up. We were both drunk, arguing about some petty shit. Pulled a punch. Next thing I know, he was lying on the ground, not moving. For one moment I felt victorious. Like the hero in an action movie, it ... felt bloody good. But then he just wouldn’t move. And then, after another moment, the other guys backed away from me.”

Roberto swallowed. Dave seemed to be a good guy, one of these simple-minded strong men who didn’t know their own strength. 

“I didn’t believe it for days,” Dave continued, “I kept asking for the guy. I asked if he was in hospital, if he’d be ok although I’d see how they zipped him up in that body bag.”

Roberto wondered if that was what human beings were supposed to be like. Full of regret over a perfect stranger. Damon would have liked this one. Or maybe not, Damon didn’t hang out with the olds, as he called everyone older than twenty.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and put his hand onto Dave’s shoulder, squeezed a bit, the way Damon would when he was consoling someone. Dave reached up and put his own hand over Roberto’s, patting it. He looked at Roberto as if he was asking for forgiveness, he realised.

“I killed a man. I shouldn’t have done it. Now I’m paying for it. That’s really all there is to it,” he said, “just wanted to tell you before someone tells you and you freak out.”

Roberto found it hard to even keep a straight face. He called the memories of what he had done into his mind, and tried to feel what Dave had described, this pain, this remorse. 

All he felt was vague annoyance at his circumstances but he carefully schooled his face into an expression similar to Dave’s, a trick Damon had taught him once. 

Dave gave him a small, grateful smile.

Then he pulled his hand away.

“Shit, I’m boring you with my fucking sob story,” he exclaimed, all previous traces of seriousness gone, and got up.

He walked over to Owen and Charlie, who had taken up a card game. Owen pulled a face and flipped Dave the bird, but when Dave gave him a bar of chocolate from his own stash as a peace offering, he took it.

Later, when they made their way to the kitchen, Roberto kept to Dave. He exuded a natural authority, in a way like the old Damon. The real Damon, as Roberto called him in his head. He talked to a lot of other inmates, dispersed advice, encouragement. Men flocked to him. Roberto noticed that even a lot of bigger, stronger men were deferential towards Dave. The guards seemed to respect, even like him too. 

He introduced Roberto to a bunch of older guys, but he found them disquieting, the way they looked from Dave to him and then back to Dave, as if they knew something he didn’t, then laughed.

Dave picked up on Roberto’s skittishness and laid a calming hand on his shoulder.

“They’ve been in here forever,” he told Roberto in a low voice, “they used to freak me out too but they’re harmless, just a bit unsettling.”

“Okay,” Roberto said, not entirely convinced. Dave winked at him, then put a small cup of chocolate pudding onto Roberto’s tray. 

In the other prison they had just opened all landings to let people get their food, with guards just monitoring entrances. In Feltham, only one landing at a time was opened, with several guards watching the inmates carefully. There were still a few exchanges Roberto could witness, small packets of drugs, tightly wrapped in cling film or stashed into crumpled cigarette boxes. The guards noticed the exchanges, but ignored them.

When Dave walked away from the counter with his tray and back to their cell, other inmates immediately approached him, crowded him. Whenever Dave looked at him, Roberto ducked his head, acted shy.

Later, after lunch, they went into a large courtyard, where inmates were playing basketball and football. Some guards were watching the games, yelling encouragement or curses.

When Roberto scanned the wooden seats he saw a man on his hands and knees. His face was badly bruised. 

Other men were standing around him chatting with each other, completely ignoring him.

Dave followed his gaze. “Yeah, that’s Jim. He ratted out his friends. I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen. Nothing I can do for him now,” he said, his tone regretful.

“But what — what are they doing to him?” Pure horror washed over Roberto at how casually the men behaved. The kneeling man seemed to be completely resigned to his fate. None of the guards interfered, even when one of the men grabbed the man’s head and rubbed it onto his crotch, laughing.

Roberto looked away.

“He fucked with guys he shouldn’t have fucked with,” Dave said, “The most important thing here is: never ever snitch. Life is hard enough in here. Snitches are the worst. Believe me, in a few weeks even you won’t hesitate to beat up a snitch. ”

Roberto nodded slowly. He started to understand. It was not unlike the code Damon had implemented in their little group. If Dave only knew — but Dave, like everyone else, fell for his angelic face.

“The worst thing is,” Dave said, “you get kind of used to it. To the weird rules, the hierarchy, you learn how to get along. It’s … I didn’t wanna get used to all this bullshit. But one day you wake up, and you accept you’re part of this world, whether you want to be or not.”

Dave looked tired.

“Wish I could help, do more, but all we can do is … try not to go under. And as selfish as it sounds, keep your head down, look out for yourself.”

"I guess," Roberto said after a while, carefully, "that's pretty much like life itself."

Dave shrugged.

“You’re a cynical kid,” he said, “wish you weren't, to be honest, but in here it's not a bad thing.”

Roberto forced a timid smile. It was good that Dave felt already protective. Life wouldn’t be too bad in here with Dave on his side.

He tried to not look at the guy on his knees. Better not to get involved. He didn’t want trouble.

They passed time wandering around the prison complex. Dave introduced him to more people, he learned where the library was, where the gym was, where the garden was, where the showers were.

They had to queue longer for dinner where they also received their breakfast packs and when they took their trays back to their cells, Dave was surrounded by inmates again, and items were put on various trays, then pocketed, but he kept firmly at Roberto's side. 

Before they arrived at their cell Dave took a bounty bar from his pocket and put it into Roberto's breakfast pack, winking.

"Look mate, you help me loose a few pounds," he joked, "I'll help you bulk a bit, right?"

Dinner was, except for the fact that it was even worse than in the other place, (something Roberto would have thought impossible) a relaxed affair. 

They turned off the light at ten thirty. 

After a few minutes, Charlie switched on a small flashlight and carefully opened a magazine that had 'Teenyland' in a curly orange font printed on the cover. There was a grinning girl on it, wearing a tennis dress, cut out at the front so her boobs were bare, while riding two cocks. Judging from the faded vintage look of the mag, Roberto thought, feeling almost wistful, that the girl probably hadn't been a teen for a long time and was a mature lady in her forties by now. Charlie reached into his track pants and pulled out a thick, already hard cock, waved it around proudly and grinned before jerking himself off. Soon, Owen, who was lying on the top bed of the bunk bed he shared with Charlie, seemed to join in on his activities, judging from the sounds coming from above.

Roberto turned around to face the wall. He wasn’t really bothered. He had shared a room with Tony, with other boys before, only Charlie didn’t even try to be quiet about it: he spat into his hand, and the obscene sound of his cock being stroked filled the cell. 

Then he heard the creaking of bedsprings and a soft thud from behind. Someone had jumped out of the top bed, maybe Owen, to join Charlie?

Not too keen on witnessing all of the interactions between Owen and Charlie, Roberto shuffled closer to the wall, pulling the thin blanket around his bony shoulders.

Then the bed dipped behind him. Roberto tensed all over. A large hand touched his shoulder, he turned around ready to punch Owen into his fucking, stupid face.

It was Dave, slipping under the blanket behind him.

“Hey,” Dave murmured, his hand caressing Roberto's flank.

Roberto tried to move away from him, but he was already pressed against the wall.

“Look, mate,” he said, as placating as possible. He really shouldn’t piss Dave off. “I’m not into that, sorry.”

“Ah, me neither,” Dave said, “but we’re in prison. It’s gonna be a long, long time til we see a wet cunt. Let’s just make the best out of this. I like you. I think you’re really cool. Let’s help each other out.”

Roberto lay stock-still, staring into the darkness, his thoughts racing. 

Dave’s hand sneaked under the waistband of his track pants and squeezed his butt. 

“No, please,” Roberto whispered, horrified. He could feel panic constricting his chest.

A thick, inquiring finger rubbed his cleft. 

"You'll like it," Dave said, and his voice sounded differently in the dark, all gentleness gone. 

“No,” he repeated, but then Dave’s other hand clamped his mouth shut. In the dark Roberto’s eyes widened. Something hard pressed into his tailbone and his pants were pushed down.

Without thinking clearly he kicked behind him, then pulled his elbow up and rammed it into Dave’s face. He heard Dave falling off the bed, onto the ground, but he got up so fast again, and before Roberto could properly think, he kicked again, this time, with more aim, with more force. Dave howled, and fell over. Roberto aimed for his face, for his chest, then his groin. Hard brutal kicks, the way Damon had taught him. He remembered how it had felt when he had kicked Jimmy. It had felt exhilarating, almost better than sex, but now he only felt blind dumb animal panic.

The memory of one of the girls they had hunted returned to him: how Roberto had held her, had pinned her arms, her back pressed against his chest, and how she had tried to scream. Damon had looked at him with pride. Her heart had beaten so fucking fast. She had managed to struggle free, kicked him in the shin with her fucking high-heels, then ran. Tony and Damon had laughed like idiots when Roberto had to run after her, cursing. He had to break into a sprint but within a few moments had closed the distance. Reaching out, he had grabbed her by the coat collar and yanked her back, literally dragged her to the van, panting, sweating. In that moment, he had felt like a lion who had felled a gazelle. A hunter. A predator, obeying the law of the jungle. Eat or be eaten. 

He couldn't help wondering if Dave was feeling the same thing now. 

Next thing he knew, Owen was pulling him back, cursing. The light went on, the doors opened. Three guards came bursting in, batons out, yelling.

One of them pulled him out of Owen’s arms and slammed him against the door, handcuffing him. 

“Inmate Harris,” a guard yelled, and Dave mumbled something, then stood up. He groaned, cradling his balls.

“I didn’t want to fuck him, and he got a bit mad at me,” Dave said.

“You tried to fuck me,” Roberto said. 

“Inmates McKenzie, Marsh,” the guard yelled.

“Didn’t see much,” Charlie mumbled, “I was sleeping.”

“Same,” Owen said, eyes downcast.

“I was assaulted,” Roberto said again. His rational mind told him that of course Charlie and Owen wouldn’t help him, but another part was stunned. They had seen everything, these fuckers.

“He fucking assaulted me,” screamed Roberto.

“He came onto me,” Dave said in an infuriatingly calm voice, “the guy is a bit worked up, obviously.”

“I want to be taken into protective custody,” Roberto yelled, hysterical at the thought the guards would leave him alone with Dave. “He wanted to rape me!”

“McKenzie, Marsh, last chance, is this really what happened?”

Owen and Charlie looked at each other, then shrugged.

“Didn’t see anything,” Owen said finally.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” said the guard, rolling his eyes, then took Roberto by his arm and hauled him out of the cell.

Another guard grabbed Dave and handcuffed him too.

“Hey, easy,” Dave said, his tone mild, but his eyes were burning. 

“He wanted to beat me up,” Roberto repeated, over and over again – the adrenaline was making him shaky, his voice shriller than he wanted. He couldn’t stop himself from talking. 

“Just shut up, ok?” the guard said, clearly exasperated as he dragged Roberto along the hallway. 

Finally, they reached another cell block, and he was locked into another, smaller cell. There was a bed, but no blanket or pillow. 

Roberto's teeth were chattering. He laid down on the bed, pulling his knees up, wrapping his arms around them. Only when the grey morning light seeped through milky windows and into the cell did he fall asleep.

When he was woken up by the guard a few hours later, he couldn’t at first remember where he was. The merciful moment of disorientation, of trying to dissect what was dream and what was reality, didn’t last long.

The guard led him back to his cell. 

“Inmate Harris will be in solitary confinement by the way,” he informed Roberto, while they were walking down the landing, “for at least a month.”

“A month?” It wasn’t that much, but hopefully enough to find some allies in here.

“Maybe longer,” the guard shrugged. “This isn’t the first incident.”

Roberto didn't dare ask what other incidents the guard was talking about.

As they turned the corner to his cell block, other inmates passed them. Roberto held his breath, but they merely greeted him with a nod and moved on. Owen and Charlie were nowhere to be seen. He found with relief that no one had touched his supplies this time, and prepared his porridge, then ate it alone, sitting on his cot. 

Later, in the courtyard people were playing their games, doing their exercises. No one paid him any mind. When he sat down he was soon joined by other inmates.

Nobody mentioned Dave.

He had no illusions about making any real friends here, but he was good at pretending, good at playing along. So he laughed at their dirty jokes and juvenile humor, hung out with them and soon he was one of the boys. 

It had been clear that Dave held some kind of authority here, so all Roberto needed to do was find those with even more power and get in their good graces.

He was clever, could be charming if he wanted to be, ruthless to the core and most importantly: adaptable.

Had it been in his nature to dwell on these kind of things, then Roberto might have been surprised by how easily he integrated himself into the prison routine. In a way, it wasn't much different from school. There were the cool kids: those doing time for illegal possession of firearms, robberies, violent crimes. There were the nerds: convicted for misuse of data, identity theft, fraud. And of course those branded as losers: scrawny, weak, pathetic little things who were ridiculed and humiliated, the guards pointedly looking away when they were used by the others. Holes to fuck, nothing more. 

Roberto didn't spare them neither a glance, nor an ounce of sympathy.

(There were the sex offenders: pedophiles, rapists. They received the worst treatment and Roberto was careful to never mention his involvement with Damon and hoped Tony was smart enough to not say anything either.)

After all, he had defended himself, had kicked David in his bloody balls for trying to take advantage of him that way.

At the time, he had been terrified. Now he felt his chest swell with pride whenever the memory came back to him. 

If others didn't have the guts to stand up for themselves, tough luck. It was none of Roberto's business.

Word had travelled fast that he'd take shit from nobody and in a twist nobody, not Dave, not himself, could have foreseen, that incident was what granted him access to the tight-knit prison community. The other inmates had been impressed with him - Dave wasn’t universally loved he learned - and some of them welcomed him with open arms. 

So when Dave was eventually released from solitary, Roberto didn't worry.


	4. Don't You Lose Your Head

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the lovely folks who left comments and kudos and for being generally lovely! 
> 
> The previous chapter and this one were supposed to be one, but due to its length we decided it was best to split it into two.
> 
> This part is also probably the best reminder that not only the gloriously talented Chifuyu is working on this fic, but ... I'm writing on it too. So... well, sorry.
> 
> This chapter is 100% gratuituous porn. After all the song I picked for this chapter is It's Raining Men :D
> 
> **In case you overlooked the tags and the warnings I am listing them for you again:**
> 
> **Graphic violence, graphic rape and non/con, gangrape, humiliation, verbal humiliation, public humiliation, feminisation (to a degree?), anal sex, anal fingering, sex toys, first time, homophobic language, collaring, body writing, mindbreak, drug use, forced drug use, forced orgasm, bad prison clichées, poor Roberto**
> 
> **If I overlooked anything please let me know! I take labelling, tagging and warning serious so nobody has to mistakenly read a story not to their liking! <3 **
> 
> I will add a short chapter summary next chapter, so it is not necessary to read this chapter in order to follow the story.
> 
> Thank you so much for writing with me, this fic would be nothing without your amazing talent, [Chifuyu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chifuyu/pseuds/Chifuyu), and thank you so much for bending my "writing" into something remotely readable, [Supastag](https://archiveofourown.org/users/findo/pseuds/supastag)!
> 
> * * *

_Amen._

(Geri Halliwell - It's Raining Men)*

 

 

London, 1998

The news of Dave's release had reached him first, thanks to Rob, his own personal messenger bird, a boy even younger than him, who had developed a kind of hero worshipping complex for reasons unknown to Roberto. He used the boy as he saw fit: sometimes as a messenger, sometimes as an informant.

Rob often sidled up to him on his walks through the cellblock, watching him with large brown eyes, bringing him extra tea bags, a cigarette here and there, sometimes even a joint he'd hidden in his sweaty palm. Roberto received his offerings with the magnanimous attitude of royalty, amused by the confused display of affection. He was used to boys and men wanting him, sometimes being rough because they didn't know how deal with the spark of desire igniting in their bellies at Roberto's sight and hating how much they wanted him.

A month was a long time; Roberto had already changed cells and cellmates while he was gone, and power in here was a fickle thing, deflagrated as soon as Dave had been thrown into solitary. Out of sight, out of mind.

Meanwhile new groups formed, new friendships were made, new alliances were forged.

He wasn't really worried, even when he made his way to the showers one night and found the halls empty apart from the prison guards hanging around the shower block door.

Roberto counted three of them. A guy who everyone called Paddy, a bear of a man, was there typing on his phone, Durston and Heyers, leaning at the wall opposite the shower stalls. They watched him but quickly looked away and continued their chat as he walked past.

He had gotten used to the row of toilet seats, urinals and showerheads. The only thing that separated the showerheads were thin rails, one end mounted to the wall. There were no cubicles, no curtains. Today Roberto found it comforting — since the incident with Dave he was constantly on edge in the showers.

No one else was here, which was odd. Roberto suppressed the urge to flee, to go outside, join the other inmates, where he couldn’t be attacked but he could not spend the next eight years in fear like this, avoiding the showers, jumping at every shadow.

Sure, Dave would attempt revenge but if Roberto managed to curry favours with others here, guys who held the same power Dave held, he could get off easy. Roberto thought of even putting together a little giftpack, a bit of weed and speed, cigarettes and one of those small bottles of vodka, then send little Rob over with it. If Roberto played his cards right, offering Rob instead of him could be the begin of a truce between him and Dave. He'd signal that if Dave didn't try to jump his ass, he'd take care to supply him with impressionable dumb little boys.

When Roberto looked up, he saw that the guards had left and sickening panic rose in him. That was definitely not normal. They were supposed to always be here.

“Hey,” he called out, his heart thudding in his throat.

It was too quiet. There weren't even any sounds coming from the hallway.

Roberto decided to listen to his instincts and return to his cell block. He gathered his items—his towel, his toothbrush, toothpaste and the soap he had bought at the canteen. When he turned to exit the showers he bumped into a solid chest.

“Hey Berto,” said Dave, “long time no see? What have you been up to?”

He took Roberto by the shoulders, like an old friend.

"All alone in the showers," he tsk'ed, "don't you know that's a bad move? Didn't you ever watch any prison movies? That's where all the bad stuff happens."

Roberto's mind went through the items in his hand, but apart from the toothbrush he had no thing he coul use as a weapon.

“And here I was told you’re the smart one,” Dave said, his smile warm. “Hm?”

He affectionately ruffled Roberto’s hair.

Roberto ducked, then aimed for Dave’s groin but only managed to hit his thigh. The kick did not incapacitate Dave as he had hoped, only infuriated him. As Roberto tried to run past him, he bumped into another inmate.

“Hey, hey, chicken, where you going,” he said as three more men entered the washroom behind him.

Dave reached around, grabbed a fistful of Roberto’s curls and flung him effortlessly into the wall.

“Scenario A,” he said, “you come into my prison and become my bitch and I take care of you. I’m not an asshole. Just a man with needs. I can be kind. I’d have protected you.”

Roberto tried to breathe as the impact with the wall knocked the air out of his lungs.

“Scenario B,” Dave continued, “you behave like a dumb little cunt and you get what you bargained for. And you become my bitch anyway."

Roberto pushed himself up, focussed on the legs of the surrounding men. More and more came in.

In the very back of the room he recognised Paddy, leaning against the wall.

“Sir,” he called out; he knew it was a dumb idea, but in his panic he didn't care any longer, “please help me.”

The men around him laughed.

“Sir, please help me,” someone mimicked Roberto’s panicked voice.

“Is the little bitch crying?”

“If these guys harm me, my father will sue you,” Roberto ground out, “I will fucking sue you!”

The laughter rose in pitch.

“Oh fuck, Paddy, did ya hear? He’s gonna fucking sue us.”

“Whatever are we gonna do?” someone else mocked in a high-pitched voice.

“Get the bitch out of his clothes, Tom,” Dave commanded a tall, wiry man in his forties.

Tom stepped behind Roberto and before he could turn around, grabbed Roberto’s hair and pulled him up. After a short moment he could hear a metallic sound then felt something cold against his skin.

Only when the cold edge of the knife slid down his shoulder did he realise that he was being cut out of his clothes. A renewed wave of disbelieving panic made Roberto jerk and thrash around.

“Hey, Flash — help him,” Dave said, his voice still calm.

The man named Flash had a shaved head and reminded Roberto of a doberman. He took hold of Roberto’s wrists, effortlessly pinning them to the ground with one large hand. When Roberto tried to struggle free, he slapped him hard in the face. Roberto was so shocked he went limp. On the back of Flash’s hand, Roberto could see his tattoo, a raised lightning symbol in green and black.

Meanwhile, Tom pulled Roberto’s sweatpants down and cool air hit Roberto’s bare skin.

“No,” Roberto said, as if saying so would be of any use.

He looked up, trying to memorise the faces of the men around him. Dave squatted down beside him.

“Eight years for ... obstruction of justice, eh?” he said, “Considering you raped three and killed two women you got off lightly.”

“Fucking rapist,” someone called out, “you thought we wouldn’t find out, ey?"

Roberto understood these men were not really interested in what he had done or not done, they merely wanted an excuse. Still, he lifted his face up to look at Dave.

“It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do any of this. It was all Damon’s and Tony’s fault. They did it! They told me not to say anything!” he sobbed. His tears were real. He had never felt horror like this before in his life.

Dave tsk-ed again.

“You’re actually good, bitch,” he said. He grabbed Roberto’s chin, forcing him to look straight ahead.

“Look at him,” he told his men, ”isn’t he cute when he cries?”

“Please,” Roberto pleaded, “please…please let me go."

Dave laughed.

“It’s always the same with you little sluts. First you beg us to let you go, then you beg us for cock.”

“No, no, please,” Roberto cried frantically, shaking his head, before an idea struck him, “My dad…my dad has a little shop. I can get whatever you want. Cigarettes, booze. Just tell me and I’ll get it.”

“Your dad doesn’t want to have anything to do with you,” Dave informed him.

For a moment Roberto stilled.

“Yeah, I talked to your brother,” Dave said, “your papa was here already. He speaks to Tony, but he doesn’t want to see you. Says he’s only got one son left, and it's not you."

Dave was lying of course. He just wanted to fuck with Roberto’s head.

“Your brother said you were the one egging the others on,” someone said.

Desperate, Roberto screamed, “No, I swear, it was Tony! He’s older than me. He forced me to watch! He raped them, together with Damon, he’s fucking sick!”

When the guy behind him, Tom or Chris, began spreading his arse cheeks apart, Roberto’s panic doubled and he writhed and wriggled with renewed vigour.

“So should we make Tony our bitch?”

“Yes, yes, do it,” Roberto shrieked, “I haven’t done anything, I swear! He was into it, he got off on it! I’ll bring him to you!"

Suddenly Chris let go of his wrists and Tom stepped back.

Roberto pushed himself into a seating position, hesitantly hopeful. The men around him stared down at him, like dumb cattle.

Without warning Dave yanked his head back, pulling at his hair, and Roberto emitted a high-pitched scream. Something sweet and thick filled his mouth and confused he began to splutter and cough. From the corner of his eyes he saw a small clear plastic bottle with a thick, slightly amber fluid in it.

Dave clamped his hand over Roberto’s mouth, not letting go before Roberto had swallowed everything. When he removed his hand, Roberto felt dizzy. Within seconds the cool washroom felt stifling hot.

“What … did you give me?” he asked, suddenly hearing his own voice from far away.

“Just a little something to bring the bitch out in you,” Dave smirked. “You’ll like it, I promise."

Roberto tried to stand but fell to his knees. Why was it so hot?

Someone — Tom — bent down, close to his ear. “It’s something to get you going, to crave a good fucking. Heard the breeders use it on bitches and mares to induce their heat.”

His deep voice vibrated inside Roberto and confused he shook his head.

Tom’s hand began to pinch and squeeze his nipples.

The sharp pain mingled and mixed with a weird, liquid feeling, something warm and wanting in his lower body.

“Is the bitch ready?” a guy standing farther away asked. He had his fly open, massaging a thick cock.

He didn’t feel panic any longer, didn’t feel fear. In fact, he felt nothing at all.

“Soon,” Dave said, then stepped behind Roberto. Roberto tried to turn his head, see what Dave was up to, but then Tom stood in front of him, grabbing his head and forcing him to look straight ahead.

Dave parted his arse cheeks and Roberto flinched violently but didn’t try to struggle any longer — it felt like too much effort. His limbs were too heavy.

If not for Tom’s sure grip on his head, Roberto would have slid to the floor completely, pressing his heated face to the cool tiles.

Bent like this, he could barely blink at Tom, his eyelids heavy, his fluttering lashes casting faint shadows on his cheekbones.

“I-I feel weird…” Roberto mumbled, the words slurring together.

Tom grabbed him even tighter, forcing Roberto’s jaw open, and pushed a thick thumb inside his mouth. When Tom pressed down on his tongue, Roberto nearly gagged but didn’t try to pull away. By now, every move, every motion seemed an insurmountable obstacle.

“Dave?” Tom asked, eyes still on the boy kneeling before him. He was hard, Roberto could see the tent in his khaki pants, smell the arousal on him like a thick cloud of musk.

“Tom, have some patience, will ya? I want to hear the little slut scream and he can hardly do that with your cock shoved down his throat, now can he?” Dave answered from somewhere behind Roberto, exasperation tinting his voice.

A moment later, Dave spat onto his hole. He could feel the thick wad of saliva hitting his hole, and he flinched again, trying to move away. Tom backhanded him so hard, he saw stars, so he stopped moving.

Then something else touched his hole and rubbed. Roberto was so surprised at the sensation his eyes flew open. He heard himself exhaling. Dave paused for a moment, then spat again, to the amusement of the gathered crowd, and kept rubbing circles.

A feeling of pleasant warmth spread from his hole to his cock. It was pleasant in a sickening, humiliating way. Mortified he realised he was clenching, twitching.

When Roberto thought, Dave would ease up on him, he slid two of his fingers inside his’s ass.

In that moment Tom pulled his spit-slicked fingers out of his mouth and began to pinch his nipples. The pain was excruciating, even through the numbing buzz of the drugs coursing through his veins. Tears welled in his eyes, rolling in thick rivulets down his cheeks and dripping onto the tiled floor as Dave skilfully fucked in and out of him, eager to tear whimpers and screams from him with every thrust.

Every time Dave thrust in, there was a tiny jolt of something inside him, making him clench around Dave's fingers—Roberto could not prevented it.

“Please!” Roberto mumbled around the finger inside his mouth, his body twitching and shaking, unable to cope with the onslaught of sensations.

Tom fumbled with his pants, pushing them and his boxers down to his thighs and exposing his already hard cock.

Roberto’s eyes widened at the sight and his stomach dropped.

“N-no! Please, no!” he begged, his pleas interrupted by his own tortured moans whenever David pushed as deep inside him as possible.

“Now look at that, begging so prettily all of the sudden. We’ll make a proper cumslut of you yet."

The men watching laughed softly, all of them palming themselves through their pants or stroking their already exposed cocks. Even Paddy had loosened the first few buttons of his trousers, one hand shoved down his boxers.

He wouldn’t get out of this, Roberto realised with sudden clarity. These men would fuck him, one after the other using his body to satisfy their primitive urges. He knew he should try harder, scream louder, make it as difficult for these bastards as possible.

“Please…” he tried one last time, looking up at the men with tearful eyes.

His pleas were met with nothing but open mockery.

Roberto heard Dave spitting once more. This time, Dave’s fingers pressed something, when they slid back into him, as if he wa crooking them or so, and it felt bone-meltingly pleasant, in a way that alarmed him.

Any residual pain from before was gone.

Dave put a large hand onto his cheeks, triumph reverberating in his words as he said: “Found it.”

 _Found what?_ Roberto thought, but then Dave did this something with his fingers again, pushed something inside him and Roberto couldn’t help but cry out in surprise, shaking.

“Told you he’s an anal slut,” Chris said.

Roberto wished Dave would stop. This was worse than pain. He wished they would hurt him instead of doing this to him — force him to like it, to get off on it. Chris yanked him up by his hair again, then roughly twisted his other nipple, in time to Dave’s thrusts.

To his disbelief, every time Chris tortured his nipples, he felt a weird sensation in his cock and his ass. He had never had anything up his ass before, had never had anyone touch his nipples (he had regarded it as something only women enjoyed and had forbidden girlfriends to caress his nipples) and to experience these sensations was the most humiliating thing to ever happen to him.

“Stop,” he begged, “please don’t…”

As his head fell onto his chest he could see his own cock, rock-hard, precum dripping down to the tiles. Every time Dave slid his fingers into him, it twitched.

Tom, never one to miss an opportunity to abase Roberto, pointed at it and laughed. “Look at you, your little clit is wet and stiff,” he crowed.

He gathered some of the clear fluid onto his fingers then circled Roberto’s left nipple. It was big and swollen, begging for more attention. Mortified, Roberto realised he was moaning loudly and arching into the touch.

Roberto hated his body for betraying him like this, but it felt so good.

“I thought he’d put up more of a fight,” someone said, “that’s fucking boring.”

 _It’s the drug,_ Roberto thought. _It’s not me. I would never enjoy this._

He bit his tongue and tried to suppress the humiliating sounds spilling past his lips.

Panic lit up in him like a fire as the sound of a zipper being pulled down echoed through the room, but he could not will his body to put up more of a fight, no matter how hard he tried. It felt like being underwater, every attempted move strangely sluggish and slow.

When he managed to shake off Tom’s grip briefly and turn around, he saw Dave on his knees behind him, pouring something over his massive, fat cock and stroking his shaft. Against his will Roberto was mesmerized. It looked enormous and thick, like a fucking baseball bat.

He was uncut and Roberto watched in horrified fascination as he pulled the foreskin back, revealing a red glans.

Dave gave him a secretive little smile, then poured the same liquid into Roberto’s cleft. For a split second, Roberto’s mind blanked out. The warm oil felt like a hot tongue licking over his rim and he nearly came. Dave’s finger rubbed his hole, circling it torturously slow. Roberto wanted nothing more than those fingers back inside him and to have Dave doing what he’d done before, to find that spot again.

Instead, Dave begun to rub his cock over Robert’s cleft, smearing oil and precum on Roberto’s heated skin. Another loud moan was Dave’s reward and Roberto closed his eyes in shame — he sounded like a whore.

That hot, thick shaft caressing his hole undid Roberto. He had, in the past, only occasionally touched his hole while jerking off, and only when he was fucking drunk. It had felt okay, nice even, and it had made his cock twitch a bit, but it was nothing compared to the pleasure he felt now.

Dave increased pressure and tempo and Roberto tried to bite his shoulder in a moribund attempt to stifle his own moans, but Chris had other ideas. He pulled Roberto’s head up by his hair, so that the men around him could see his shame, his flushed cheeks, the parted lips.

Occasionally, Dave slipped two or three fingers back inside him, crooked them just so, causing Roberto to shake and tremble.

“Oh god,” he heard himself moan, loud and clear, and the men burst into laughter.

“What a dirty cockslut,” someone said.

Again the thick shaft pressed against his cleft and Roberto was panting with need, pushing back against it.

There was no point in pretending any longer: He needed this, it felt so good.

When he could feel the tip slap against his rim, he almost bucked like a mare and pushed his arse against Dave, trying to get that cock in. Up until this moment, he had never thought he’d ever want a cock in his arse. Now, Roberto feared he would die if that fat cock wasn't inside him soon. Dave, however, didn’t enter him. He barely stroked Roberto’s hole with his cock, traced the rim, but did little more.

 _It’s just what they gave me,_ Roberto told himself again, _this is not my fault._

His muddled thoughts were interrupted when Dave pushed in again and added another finger. The men around them had gone quiet, shuffling closer. A few were stroking themselves, but the loudest noise was the squelching, wet sound of Dave’s fingers sliding in and out of Roberto’s twitching hole and Roberto’s low moans.

Chris said, “Turn him around, so everyone can see.”

Dave hummed in agreement, then abruptly pulled his fingers out and, grabbing Roberto’s head, turned him towards the wall so that the assembled men had a proper view of his hole.

“Slut is ready for a breeding,” he said.

__By now, every single man in the room was hard and eager to fuck Roberto, fill him up with their cock and cum, make him beg for it. Roberto couldn't imagine anything more divine._ _

__"Please..." he whispered against the cracked tiles, his own cock rock-hard and leaking._ _

__"Please _what_ , you little bitch?" Dave asked, leaning in close enough for Roberto to feel his warm breath against his skin. "Want some cock now all of the sudden? Something to fill up that tight cunt of yours? Don't worry, sweetheart, we'll make sure to stuff every single one of your holes."_ _

__Before the implications of what had been said could register in Roberto's brain, he was already pushed down to the floor once more, this time forced onto his hands and knees, with his arse raised up high and legs spread so wide, his twitching hole was visible to everyone in the room._ _

__Appreciative whistles and whispers followed as Roberto was put on display. A couple of men cursed violently underneath their breaths and jerked themselves just a little harder. The shuffling sounds of feet on tiles grew louder as they stepped closer. All of them wanted to get a good look of Roberto, all of them wanted to see his wet, red hole. A pack of wolves eager to breed the bitch in heat._ _

__For a moment, Dave's sure grip on his hair loosened._ _

__"Time to step back, gentleman!" he announced in his pleasant voice, "first fuck is mine, as usual. Don't want that tight virgin hole to get all sloppy before I’ve had my fill. Afterwards, you can use his pussy all you want."_ _

__He bent over, his broad chest flush against Roberto's back, and licked a long stripe from his neck up to his ear._ _

__"Think we can make you bleed? It's your first time taking cock after all. It happens."_ _

__God, yes. Roberto wanted it. Wanted to be fucked open by these men’s cocks. Fucked until he was sore and aching, cum dripping down his thighs and face, his hole gaping and red._ _

_This isn’t you,_ the small voice inside his head that grew weaker with every passing second whispered. _This is what the drugs are doing to you._

__He didn’t care. He needed something, anything inside him that soothed the burning ache, the unbearable feeling of emptiness._ _

Speech had abandoned Roberto almost completely. The only thing he was still capable of was an endless mantra of _Pleasepleaseplease._

__Roberto could feel Dave smile against the curve of his ear. "Told you I would make you beg for it."_ _

__Then he rammed his cock into Roberto's hole in one single thrust._ _

__It hurt._ _

__It hurt so fucking much Roberto screamed until his throat was hoarse. His nails broke as he raked them across the tiles in a futile attempt to crawl away from Dave._ _

__The men broke out in loud cheers and highfived each other._ _

__"Now, now," Dave cooed, "is it too big for you, sweetheart? Can't take the cock you've been begging for?"_ _

__The tears that had just dried on Roberto's cheeks returned twice as strong, but Dave did not care for them. Neither did the other men._ _

__On the contrary, his screams and pitiful wails only edged them on._ _

__"Fuck him properly, Dave. I want to see him choke on his own tears," somebody to Roberto’s left side said._ _

__"Why not have him choke on our dicks?" another suggested._ _

__They laughed. And Dave was laughing along with them while fucking into Roberto. His huge cock moving in and out of his arse with a force that pressed all the air out of Roberto’s lungs._ _

__The sound of his balls slapping against his ass was sickening and yet, every time he heard it, Roberto’s cock oozed more precum._ _

__Every time Dave thrust in, the resistance and the pain lessened. Now and then he pulled out to show his hole to the other men._ _

__“Looks like a bitch’s cunt,” Flash commented._ _

__General hilarity ensued and the men started exchanging suggestions on how to put Roberto to use. Dave pushed in again, and Roberto drooled onto the tiles. He could feel his body craving the brutal thrusts, Dave hitting that spot every time. He could feel his hole clench around the thick cock and it made him tremble with a poisonous, mind-consuming pleasure previously unknown to him._ _

__Roberto wanted it to be over. If Dave only came, finished fucking him, then he might be able to look at himself in the mirror come the next day. Somehow it would be okay. But if he came in front of all these guys, who were treating him worse than a bitch in heat, he’d never be the same again._ _

__Dave, instead of speeding up and cumming, became slower, his thrusts more shallow. The sound of the lube squelching around Dave’s cock was gross and yet it undid Roberto even more. He heard himself panting and whining, his body eager to push back, to get that cock deeper inside him._ _

__“So, you want us to stop, right?” Dave asked, reaching around and pinching Roberto’s nipples._ _

__Only the fat, blunt tip of Dave’s cock was still inside him, slipping in and out, teasing the reddened rim of Roberto’s hole._ _

__When Roberto didn’t reply, Dave pushed in a little, but pulled out slowly again, and this time Roberto did cry out._ _

__“Please,” he begged and tried to push himself back onto it._ _

__“Please what?” Dave asked, almost politely, coldly, as if being rock-hard and fucking into a tight hole didn’t affect him. When Roberto glanced at him over the shoulder, Dave looked amused. The only thing betraying he was fucking at all, was a thin sheen of sweat covering his forehead and the bridge of his nose._ _

__To Roberto he looked as if he was capable of just pulling out completely, zipping his pants up and walking away._ _

__“You have to learn to be polite, slut,” Dave said, “first you have to introduce yourself with your proper name.”_ _

__Roberto sensed it was a trap, but asked anyway, “What — what is my proper name?”_ _

__Another round of laughter ensued. Roberto could hear how drunk they were already. Paddy the guard didn’t seem to care. Fuck, even he was holding a paper cup. Someone filled it up with clear liquid out of a plastic coke bottle._ _

__“Your name is cumdump,” Dave told Roberto gently. Before Roberto could say anything, he slid in a bit deeper. Roberto’s mouth fell open and his eyes rolled back._ _

__“N-no,” he tried to say, tried to shake his head._ _

__“Come on, say it, introduce yourself,” Dave demanded, and pulled out again. He rubbed Roberto’s hole with his shaft but did not fuck into him._ _

__“I … can’t,” sobbed Roberto, shaking his head._ _

__Dave gave no reply, just made a show of pulling out and sitting back. Roberto couldn’t stand it any longer._ _

__“I’ll say it,” he cried out, tears and snot dripping from his face._ _

__Dave laughed, then shuffled closer to Roberto’s raised ass again, pushing his cock in._ _

__Roberto screamed, his throat already sore and burning. This time it wasn’t a cry of pain, but one of sheer relief._ _

__“Say it,” Flash said._ _

__“I—I’m,” Roberto took a deep breath, “I’m a cumdump.”_ _

__Another hard thrust made him lose his balance and he was shoved towards the men. His legs spread further apart, and his arms gave way underneath him and he landed with his face onto the tiles._ _

__“That’s it, cumdump,” he heard Dave’s voice from behind, his words followed by another perfect thrust. Roberto felt the heat in his belly spiral out, and he heard himself screaming as he came, harder than ever before in his life. He had never imagined it was possible to cum so hard. Despite not being touched at all, his cock was spurting and twitching as he lay there, his ass desperately milking Dave’s still hard cock._ _

__Tom and Chris began pulling Roberto around, so everyone could see his face. Roberto realised Paddy was filming him with his phone’s camera._ _

__He had been filmed while being fucked like a whore in the showers, surrounded by all these men. Even worse, he had cum while screaming and begging and moaning, had willingly partaken in his own debasement._ _

__His mind replayed what he had done over and over again. His legs, his arms were still twitching from the force of his orgasm._ _

__Dave grunted, then Roberto felt his cock pump his hot load into him. If only this would have meant the end of it. But of course these men were not done with him. And sure enough, when Dave pulled out of him and the cum was flowing out of his hole despite his best efforts to hold it in, Paddy was already moving closer. He circled Roberto with slow lazy steps, eyes on the twitching, leaking hole, before his eyes moved up to Roberto’s face._ _

__“Wait,” Flash said and Paddy turned to look at the inmate, a lazy grin of comprehension spreading on his thuggish face. Flash was shaking something in his hand and when Roberto raised his head he realised it was a marker. With an iron grip, Tom forced Roberto to crane his neck, so he couldn’t move an inch and Flash began to write on his forehead._ _

__Paddy snapped a pic of him when he was done, then showed it to Roberto._ _

__The writing on his face said “cum hole”._ _

__The men howled with laughter, high-fiving each other again._ _

__“Congrats, Dave,” Paddy said, “that was the quickest slut training you’ve done since I started working here. You're getting better and better, hey.”_ _

__“Not even fifteen minutes until he was gagging for it,” Chris agreed._ _

__Resigned, Roberto closed his eyes and let defeat and humiliation wash over him in an all-consuming, crushing wave._ _

__Someone nudged his exposed hole with his boot._ _

__“Up on your knees,” a drunk voice snarled. Roberto didn’t bother to look at the man, just obediently got up and raised his ass._ _

__The next cock pushing in was smaller than Dave’s but set a fast and brutal rhythm that left his knees rubbed raw on the hard tiles._ _

__Flash pulled him up by his hair, then waved his cock in front of his face._ _

__“Suck it,” he demanded._ _

__Roberto knew that telling these guys he had never sucked cock before wouldn’t spare him, so he opened his mouth, and took the stiff flesh in._ _

__Flash immediately began to pull his hair and brutally fuck his face while Paddy was filming him._ _

__“You love sucking cock, huh?” Flash sneered._ _

__Roberto couldn’t respond with the man’s cock down his throat, only managed a pitiful helpless moan when he felt his body reacting to the rough treatment._ _

__“Suck harder,” Flash hissed, hand already raised to slap him again, and Roberto tried to obey, hollowing his cheeks, licking as much of the shaft as he could. His own cock was limp, but his ass was twitching and clenching, greedy for cock all over again. He moved back, fucked himself on that cock, angling himself so that the man’s dick hit that spot. A renewed flame of lust licked up his spine._ _

__After a while Flash went rigid. He cursed, then pulled out a bit, so the heavy tip rested on Roberto’s tongue. He could feel the shaft pumping and twitching, then a thick spurt of cum hit the back of his throat and filled his mouth._ _

__He squealed in shocked surprise. He had never known it to be so much._ _

__Flash pulled out completely but he wasn’t done. Another spurt hit Roberto, this time right onto his face. Thick, white cum dripping down his lips and chin._ _

__(In another life, one that now seemed a million light years away, Roberto and Tony had loved to do that to the hookers before Damon had killed them—let them choke on their dicks, then cream their faces and call them names, like sluts, bimbos, cockwhores.)_ _

__Flash bent forward, then forced Roberto’s mouth open. Behind him the man gripped his hips and slammed in, and Roberto came dry, howling, trembling from the force of his second orgasm._ _

__Paddy was still filming him. Roberto let his head sink in shame when Flash finally let go of his jaw. He was exhausted. He was humiliated. And his whole body was sore. Roberto wanted nothing more than to crawl away and hide in a far corner. When he tried to hide his face Tom pulled him up by his hair, shaking him, laughing._ _

__“What are you? Tell us,” Tom demanded._ _

__“I’m a cumdump,” Roberto answered, almost mechanically, completely resigned._ _

__He was a cumdump after all. Nothing more._ _

__Just a hole for fucking._ _

__After that Roberto didn’t care any longer. When another guy approached he opened his mouth wide to swallow his cock, sucked with abandon, smiled stupidly when he got another load in his face. He did nothing to suppress his moans and gasps and cries. Eagerly he debased himself, even licking cum from a man’s boot at one point, laughing wildly at the end while tears were streaming over his face._ _

__He did not remember who he was and it was a relief._ _

__Finally, the men grew bored with him. Roberto, still under the influence, moaned and writhed on the floor in a slippery mixture of semen and lube. His cock had been limp for the last hour, but he was still cumming, was still craving for his hole to be fucked, that spot deep in his ass to be pushed and massaged._ _

__Dave who had spent the last minutes watching and taunting him, pulled something black out of pockets. From the corner of his eyes, Roberto saw it was phallic, made from plastic, big and thick and flared at the base._ _

__A buttplug, he realised._ _

__Dave poured the same strange liquid he had fed Roberto before and poured over his ass, over the entire buttplug. He pushed the tip against Roberto’s red, swollen rim._ _

__“Your cunt looks exactly like a well-fucked pussy now, wet and swollen,” Dave commented._ _

__Roberto giggled into the floor, fingers trying to find purchase on the tiles. He felt the warm oil heat his insides, felt himself reacting to it, but the ease with which his body seemed to find pleasure didn’t shock or surprise him any longer._ _

__“You’re a fucking mess,” Flash said._ _

__“Mmmh,” Roberto mumbled, slowly crawling over to Flash. Flash took the time to scrawl other slurs onto Roberto’s body, “cumwhore”, “dumb slut”._ _

__Finally Dave pulled him up on his hair again and into a kneeling position. Roberto swayed back and forth, hazy. A few times, his legs slid apart, like a young colt just after birth, and he laughed senselessly, crazed. Dave grumbled something under his breath to Tom. Tom rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a thick leather collar and a chain. Dave took it, then fastened it around Roberto’s neck. Dave clipped the chain on, then stepped away to admire his handiwork._ _

__“Well, let’s get you back to the cell,” he said, and tugged the leash. When Roberto attempted to stand, he whistled at him, like a dog. “Bitches don’t walk, they crawl.”_ _

__No fight left inside him, Roberto sank down to his knees, too out of it to walk anyway._ _

__When Dave led him through the cellblock, most of the guards didn’t even raise a brow. One or two shook their heads at Dave. Inmates who walked past laughed, except for the new ones who stared at Roberto with a mix of pity and disgust etched onto their faces._ _

__He recognized Rob among them, little Rob, leaning against a wall, observing him with the same aroused greed he had seen on the faces of the men who had raped him. When Roberto lifted his head to lok at him, his eyes darted away, and Roberto, despite the drugs still surging in his veins, skin burning and head pounding, knew with utmost clarity that little Rob had set him up in one way or another._ _

__“That’s what happens when you think you’re better than us,” Flash told one of the newbies._ _

__Roberto understood he was being made an example of._ _

__Finally back in the cell, he was allowed to wash himself perfunctorily with cold water. It wasn’t even his own cell, but that of Dave and his men. None of the guards cared._ _

__Dave ordered him to sleep on the floor for the night, and Roberto knew not to talk or fight back, just curled up on the concrete and fell asleep._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * * *
> 
> *I know the original is by the awesome Weathergirls, but Halliwell's cover was the summer hit of 2001 which is the era our fic (roughly 1998 – 2001/2002) is set in.


	5. Oh Here They Come The Beautiful Ones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised a short recap of the last chapter for those who decided to skip it: 
> 
> Roberto's prison flashback ends with him overestimating his own luck and underestimating Dave's power and influence—he is cruelly punished for resisting Dave.
> 
> But we're not monsters so here is a short chapter, which isn't set during Christmas time, but hopefully conveys a bit of Christmas spirit with its relative peacefulness.
> 
> Attention re:warnings: the tags about drug abuse apply to this chapter.
> 
> Thank you again, [Supastag](https://archiveofourown.org/users/findo/pseuds/supastag) for your beta work! You're the best <3
> 
> * * *

_You don't think about it_  
_You don't do without it_  
_because you're beautiful_

(Suede — Beautiful Ones)

“Roberto,” the man says again. And again. And again. Like a fucking broken record.

Roberto. Roberto. Roberto.

He blinks and stares at the cars passing in front of the pub. 

“Roberto, are you okay?”

Ah it’s Tonny the skinhead. His fingers are curled around his upper arm. Roberto tries to shake them off, but Tonny holds on. His open-mouthed puppy look ignites something ugly in Roberto.

“I’m fine,” he snaps.

Tonny offers him a cigarette and Roberto takes it, gripping Tonny’s hands when he lights it.

“Now fuck off,” he says. Instead of leaving, Tonny takes his hands and examines them curiously under the flickering street lights.

Roberto can see himself they’re shaking. He tries to stop it, the embarrassing tremor, but his body won’t obey him. He almost jumps in surprise when Tonny plucking his own cig out from between his lips, takes his hands between his own large paws to rub them until they’re warm again.

“Cold, yeah?” he asks.

Roberto shakes his head first, then nods. “Maybe.”

Tonny shrugs and asks: “Who is Dave?”

Roberto yanks his hands out of Tonny’s grip.

“None of your fucking business.” He stumbles away on unsteady legs yet with his head held high.

“Where are you going?” Tonny calls after him.

Roberto doesn’t turn around.

“Working,” he calls back.

He walks two, maybe three steps and then there are fingers around his upper arm, grabbing him tightly.

Roberto looks back over his shoulder, right into Tonny’s dumb but determined face.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he hisses.

Tonny looks near apologetic, his eyes a warm shade of brown, but he doesn’t let go of Roberto.

“Stay,” he says and after a moment of contemplation: “Please.”

“Why should I?” Roberto spats, trying to wriggle out of the tight hold. It’s no use, Tonny’s hand remains firmly around his triceps and frustration settles in Roberto’s bones. 

“Listen, you wanker, nobody who doesn’t pay me, gets to touch me. So you either have a nice, big wad of cash for me or you take your filthy hands off my arm, got it?”

God he hates being filled with that useless anger, but he’s not above taking it out on the skin.

"Just fuck off, mate."

Immediately, Tonny releases him, raising both hands in apology. “I have money.”

Quickly, as if he’s afraid Roberto will disappear should he fail to present proof of his claim soon, Tonny pulls cash from his pockets, waving them in Roberto’s face with a crooked smile.

“See?” he asks and Roberto’s eyes widen.

There’s at least 100 quid in Tonny’s calloused hands and Roberto can barely resist the urge to reach out and grab the crumpled notes. A moment later, excitement is replaced by suspicion and he eyes Tonny carefully.

“Whose cock did you suck for that? Thought you were broke?” Roberto asks, his gaze shifting between the notes and Tonny’s face.

He isn’t stupid, and he’s good at reading people, especially people like Tonny who don’t bother hiding their emotions. And what Roberto sees is anxiety.

Tonny might be grinning, but his whole body is buzzing with nervous energy. He won’t stop picking at the money in his hand and shuffles his feet whenever their eyes meet, like a child caught telling a lie.

Realisation dawns on Roberto. 

"Alfie," he says, "he gave you money to pay me? Because I'm your present, right?"

Embarrassment colours Tonny’s face a bright red, at the same time the smug smile vanishes and he looks down at his worn-out trainers, nodding slowly.

“Fuck, that’s hilarious,” he laughs, amused despite himself. “You couldn’t say no without insulting him.”

Tonny shrugs.

“And now you’re running away from Alfie and his brother because you’re too afraid to put your dick inside me. God, you’re fucking pathetic.”

"They said, I should fuck you."

Roberto scoffs. “So what you gonna do now?”

He points at the cash in Tonny's hand. "I'll suck you off for that."

“No!” Tonny is quick to clarify, his mouth pulled into a wide grin Roberto supposes is meant to be confident, but only makes him look like a fool. “Only pussy!”

Roberto rolls his eyes.

"But you want to pay me anyway,” Roberto prods, when nothing else is forthcoming.

Tonny grins and nods. 

“Yes, yes,” he says senselessly.

Tonny pushes the money into his hands.

“Yours, ok?” he says, “so … stop working. This,” he gestures at the notes, “enough for a night.”

Roberto pockets the cash without thinking about it twice.

“Tell Alfie,” Tonny says, “I did it with you.”

“I’m gonna tell Alfie you sucked my cock,” Roberto says. “Tell him, you begged me to fuck you on your knees. Like that?”

Tonny just throws his hands up in the air. “Ey,” he says, “you are … mean.”

“Ah, we've got us a smart one,” Roberto mocks him.

Finally he turns around and continues to walk.

“I’m gonna get myself something to smoke and take a nice hot bath,” he calls over his shoulder, “coming or what?”

Tonny hurries after him.

“You have a bath tub?” 

“No, I don’t,” Roberto answers, full of confidence, “but you do.”

 

***

 

They end up getting curry at the shop around the corner. 

Roberto makes good on his threat and occupies Tonny’s bathroom while Tonny warms up their food. 

“Hey,” Roberto calls after him, while expertly rolling a fat blunt, “I’m hungry. Bring me some!”

It was meant as a joke, but Tonny does indeed bring him some curry, dutifully putting the styrofoam container on the washing machine beside the bathtub before sitting down on a stool right next to the door.

“You’re really bathing,” he remarks.

Roberto shakes the joint, then sticks it between his lips and pulls himself up. Tonny gets the hint for once and produces a lighter from his pocket before reaching out and burning off the tightly wound paper cap.

After a few puffs Roberto offers the blunt to Tonny. He takes it without hesitating and inhales deeply. Roberto watches with unexpected fascination as thin trails of smoke escape Tonny’s peculiar mouth and curl around the curves of his shaved head like a dark halo.

“Not bad,” Tonny comments, effectively tearing him from his musings. Roberto says nothing but hums softly in contentment, occasionally flicking water at Tonny who endures it without complaint.

They stay like this for a few minutes, in almost companionable silence, before Roberto remembers the food and digs into his curry.

“Only girls take baths,” Tonny says after a while.

Roberto spits out a bit of chicken.

“What the fuck?”

“True,” Tonny says, “men take showers. Ladies take baths. With bubbles.”

“Is that so?” Roberto lifts a lazy foot and turns the tap on with it, “well, go and get me some bubbles!’

Tonny laughs and gets up. “I have. Really!” He opens the cupboard above the sink and rummages around. Assorted trash, razors, soap and a can of shaving cream fall out but Tonny doesn’t spare the resulting mess a single glance, simply steps over the small pile when he finds what he was searching for.

“Look!”

Tonny holds up a blue bottle, excited like a little child and with triumph shining in his eyes.

“Okay, great, whatever, mate.” 

Roberto’s enthusiasm is limited. He is busy devouring the last bit of curry and staring at the ceiling. Tonny laughs again. While clenching the joint between his lips he uncaps the bottle and pours it into the water.

Roberto rolls his eyes.

“It’s good. Good stuff. Expensive,” Tonny explains, sniffing the bottle, then handing it to Roberto, inviting him to sniff it too, “not cheap shit.”

Roberto wordlessly puts the bottle onto the washing machine and waves his hand, without even looking at it, gesturing at the joint, profoundly disinterested in Tonny’s review of bath products.

Tonny, however, takes the bottle back and rolls it in his hands, looking at it. The overpowering smell of weed fills the bathroom. 

“You can’t have all of it,” he says. “You must leave a little.”

It’s maybe the tone Tonny’s voice suddenly has. Or the way he holds that stupid bottle. Or his posture, hunched, or his face looking gaunt and sad. It’s maybe the weird move Tonny’s upper lip makes, a slight quiver, that makes Roberto look at him.

“It’s my kid’s shampoo,” Tonny says, "I have a baby."

Roberto rolls his eyes. Great, a fucking sob story.

“What now, your evil ex has the kid, or is it in foster care, or is it dead?” Roberto sneers.

At that Tonny looks up.

“You’re not good,” he says. “You’re not ... nice.”

“No, not particularly,” Roberto allows, bending forward and taking the joint from Tonny, “but at least I’m pretty.”

Tonny snorts. He stands up, slowly, and puts the bottle back into the cabinet.

“Pretty is not forever,” he says, “one day you stop being pretty. Then you’re just a bad old man.”

Roberto giggles, lightheaded from the joint and not the slightest bit bothered by Tonny’s grim predictions for his future.

“Nothing is forever,” he argues, “and before I get to be an old man I’ll be dead.”

Tonny turns around abruptly and stares at Roberto with a seriousness that doesn’t match the image of the dumb skinhead Roberto has of him.

“I thought so too, before my kid,” he says.

“Okay, so you _really_ wanna talk about this, don’t you?” Roberto feels mellowed and blazed enough to indulge Tonny, “About your kid, I mean.”

Tonny looks down at him, in a bemused manner. 

“I miss him,” he says simply.

“What's his name? How old is he? Is he hot? Does he have a big cock?” Roberto laughs.

Tonny uses his fingers to count. “His name is Ivar. Eighteen months? He’s a baby. He has a huge dick. Like his daddy.”

Roberto laughs at this dumbass and shakes his head. 

Later, Tonny rolls another blunt, a lot bigger than their first of course, always trying to assert his masculinity even when rolling a fucking blunt. The weed fucks them up, it’s too strong like this, nearly hallucinogenic and Roberto giggles even when admonishing Tonny for being too stupid to do it properly.

They watch Pulp Fiction, although both have seen it before. Turns out Tonny fucking loves the movie and can re-enact entire scenes. At some point he decides to tell Roberto all about John Travolta and why he thinks the scene where he dances with Uma Thurman is hilarious and the best scene to ever have been conceived for the big screen.

“Because he’s a dancer!” Tonny says, “he’s a real dancer. But here… nothing! Moves like just a normal man!”

Roberto, at that time too baked to do more than raise a lazy eyebrow, doesn’t get it but laughs nonetheless when Tonny imitates John Travolta and falls over Roberto’s stretched legs. It’s nice. He feels good, home early for once, with enough money in his pocket and nothing to worry about.

Just to see if Tonny is up for it, Roberto suggests he'd shotgun the next hit, registering with amusement how Tonny almost eagerly leans closer to inhale the smoke Roberto blows out through his mouth. 

For an instant their lips touch. 

Roberto doesn't say anything, but he watches as Tonny leans his head back and blows the smoke out again, his adam's apple moving.

They finally pass out during a re-run of The Simpsons.

It’s almost six when Roberto finds himself in Tonny’s arms. Again.

“What the fuck,” he mumbles, but doesn’t make an effort to untangle himself from the other man.

“You asleep,” Tonny informs him, “I’m taking you home.”

“Mmmh.” 

Roberto doesn’t protest when Tonny kicks the unlocked door to his flat open and carries him to his bed.

He pulls the rumpled duvet from the floor and snuggles into it. Tonny stands in front of the bed, slightly swaying, then goes to the window and pulls the curtains shut.

“Goodnight,” he says.

“See you around,” Roberto yawns and promptly falls asleep.


	6. Love Night bring Us Back Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anoher update for you guys! Not quite as fluffy as the last, but there's some more interaction between Tonny and Roberto! Enjoy! 
> 
> Thank you again, [Supastag](https://archiveofourown.org/users/findo/pseuds/supastag) for your beta work! You're the best <3
> 
> * * *

_Ooh baby_  
_I feel right_

(Stardust - Music Sounds Better Than You)

 

Friday nights are never great.

People go drinking with their work mates straight after their boring eight-hour shifts, still dressed in their ill-fitting office suits, pale shirts and cheap shoes. They hang out until eleven, then stumble shitfaced into clubs and only around three or four in the morning, when they're too drunk to get it up, do they think of picking up a hooker.

On Fridays, Roberto usually stays at the Diamond Queen with Frankie, watching the strippers and dancers with seething jealousy as they earn more cash in an hour than he does the entire night.

Hanging out at the Queen isn't all bad though. Everyone who works at nights ends up here eventually: dancers, hookers, but also chefs, waiters, chauffeurs, bartenders, bouncers, at times even regular people who work a nightshift in a factory and need to relax before going home to their families. The eclectic mix attracts artists, writers, journalists, actors, insomniacs. They have a bar, three dancefloors and two dark rooms, as well as a restaurant that opens at two o'clock and stays open until noon.

If Roberto and Frankie don't get any customers they often hang out with strippers and hostesses from the surrounding clubs.

It's when Roberto is sitting with a bunch of them—the girls giggling as they comb their fingers through his long hair, charmed by his pretty face and fluttering lashes—that he spots Tonny all by himself at the bar.

He looks nervous, more so than usual, and is either ignoring the bartender who is talking to him, or simply doesn't notice the man trying to catch his attention.

Roberto amuses himself a while with observing the skin, the girls and Frankie forgotten for the moment.

From what he can make out it seems that Tonny has dressed up for the evening, or at least tried to. Gone is the tracksuit and the worn-out muscle shirt, replaced by a suit—ill-fitting as it is—and a horribly tied tie.

He looks like a child who has rummaged through the closet to play dress-up with daddy's clothes. No doubt this pathetic display of maturity and sense of responsibility is meant to impress somebody. No doubt either that Tonny will fail in that regard if he keeps acting like the dumbass he is.

It's none of Roberto's business.

One of the girls is asking him something but he can’t bring himself to actually listen to her, and after a few tries she gives up, rolling her eyes. He flips her the bird, and she shows him her middle-finger, mouthing ‘cunt’. It’s all good, Ellen is one of Frankie’s friends and can be funny when she’s not completely pissed. He grabs the 100 pounds in his pocket tightly, imagining the crisp sound when he crumples the thin paper between his fingers, then gets up without a word. She waves a lazy good-bye, but is immediately distracted by a guy approaching her.

It's not his bad conscience that leads him to the bar. After all, he helped Tonny out when he took Alfie's money. Roberto owes him nothing. It's probably boredom, Roberto reasons with himself, that makes him take the seat next to Tonny.

"Can't you even tie a damn tie?" he says in way of greeting and motions for the bartender to bring him two beers.

Tonny almost falls off the high chair and Roberto has to suppress a laugh.

"Roberto!" Tonny exclaims after regaining his balance, and his previously sullen expression brightens at the sight of Roberto.

For a moment, Roberto is taken aback. It's rare for people to be genuinely delighted by his presence—at least when they haven't paid for it—and for once in his life, words are failing him.

The ensuing silence is mercifully interrupted by the bartender, who brings their ordered beers with a cheerful “here you go, boys,” before tending to his other customers again.

Roberto is quick to take his first sip and watches as Tonny mirrors the movement, still smiling and looking at Roberto as if the sun is shining straight out of his ass.

"What are you doing here, all dressed up?" Roberto finally asks, nibbling on the rim of his glass.

"Alfie and Harvey, they'll give me a job if I do well today," Tonny answers, his voice heavy with pride.

If they have offered Tonny a job then it’s only because nobody else is willing to do it, and because nobody would miss an illegal immigrant if something goes wrong.

But Roberto plays along, at least for now.

"What," he chuckles, "you’re telling me you've got a job interview today? Here?"

Tonny nods enthusiastically and spills some of the beer on his suit jacket in the process. He doesn't even notice. It's so pathetic it’s almost endearing.

"Dressed like that?"

The cheerful expression on Tonny's face shifts to something more subdued and traces of doubt appear when he looks down at himself.

"I borrowed it," he mumbles, a soft blush on the edges of his sharp cheekbones, as if that's explanation enough.

"Borrowed or stole it from some poor chap’s grave?" Roberto teases.

Tonny doesn't reply, his big body slumping in the seat in sudden resignation, and Roberto, despite his insistence that it's not his bad conscience urging him on, gentles his tone.

"Come on, lift your chin a bit. I can't do your tie if you sit there like a sack of potatoes."

He nudges Tonny's chin with his long, delicate fingers, noticing but not commenting on the soft shudder it earns him.

"Straighten up a bit. Stand proud and look people in the eyes when they're talking to you," Roberto instructs as he loosens the messy knot of Tonny's tie.

"Show some backbone, alright? Alfie and Harvey are intimidating bastards but it won't help acting like a little bitch in front of them, with your tail between your legs."

Tonny listens nods once or twice while watching the nimble movements of Roberto's hands.

"Now, that's better. The suit is still shitty but at least you've got a proper tie."

Roberto leans back against the counter and takes another sip from his beer, admiring his own handiwork.

It's been a while since he last had to do that, the days when he'd help his father do his tie in the morning just before work long gone. Roberto quickly wills the memory of the last time he saw his father away. His dad probably doesn't even know that his son is still alive and whoring himself out on the streets for a bit of cash, a warm bed and a roof over his head at night. Maybe it’s for the best.

Roberto shakes his head, banishing the sudden unpleasant thoughts and focuses on the man in front of him instead.

Tonny is looking down at his tie and takes the end of it in his hands, careful, as if he's holding a priceless piece of art and not cheap polyester.

"Thank you," he says, smiling from ear to ear. "You're good with these things, yes? Know what to look like? Know how to talk? How to make people listen?"

Roberto rolls his eyes. He smoothes Tonny’s shirt, tucks it into the trousers, checks the belt. Not tight enough. He opens, then fastens it again.

“Look, pull your shoulders back.”

Tonny obeys, then grins. There’s spittle on his lips and he’s squinting.

Roberto, suddenly impatient, gets up, takes Tonny’s hand and pulls him towards the toilets.

“Okay. Let’s go,” he says.

“You want to suck my cock to make me feel good?” Tonny laughs, nodding stupidly along to his own joke, then adds, ”No faggot shit, ok?”

Roberto rolls his eyes again and pulls him in front of a mirror.

Tonny is still guffawing, then mimes sucking a cock. Roberto slaps his head so hard Tonny’s forehead connects with the mirror glass.

“Ow… ow.”

“Stop. Moving,” Roberto hisses.

Tonny shrugs, and tries to stand still.

“Now look at yourself,” Roberto commands.

Tonny looks at Roberto in the mirror.

“At yourself, your eyes,” Roberto could swear he has never talked to someone slower and dumber than this guy.

Tonny finally stills. He does as Roberto told him, directs his gaze at himself.

“Restrain yourself,” he continues, “don’t move too much. Don’t move your shoulders. Let your arms hang, like this. Stand straight. Don’t look away when Alfie talks to you, he doesn’t like that. Just look into his eyes—but not too long. Look into his eyes, so he can see you, okay? Just long enough, so that he and Harvey can see you’re no coward. You’re not afraid. But not too long, okay? They don’t like that either. Look them in the eyes, count to five, then blink, drop your gaze.”

Just as he has been told, Tonny looks Roberto in the eyes, holds his gaze for five seconds.

Then he turns away, casually, his head raised.

“Good,” Roberto says.

“They have to trust you to be able to do fucked up shit, but not be fucked up yourself, is that clear?”

Tonny nods curtly.

“So this is goo—?”

“Don’t speak,” Roberto says, “not unless it’s absolutely necessary. Don’t nibble on your lips. When you have to smile, don’t show your teeth, just lift the corners of your mouth up a bit—that’s it.”

Tonny tilts his head a little, and suddenly he looks like a skull, his eyes hidden in the shadows.

“Think of the worst thing you’ve ever done,” Roberto says, “think of the most fucked up thing you’ve ever done.”

Tonny’s gaze clears up all of a sudden, as if a fog has been lifted.

“Think of that time when you did something you never thought you would, could ever do,” Roberto continues, “think of how it made you feel.”

He watches Tonny carefully, observes his features, the strange, calm gaze, the amber colour of his eyes, the darkness lurking in them.

“Remember what you’re capable of,” Roberto says.

For a long while Tonny looks at himself in the mirror, and Roberto can see the change in him.

He wonders briefly what Tonny has done. Usually he looks like a obedient lap dog, all bark and no bite but right now in this very moment he looks cruel, determined even.

“Good,” Roberto says finally in a low voice, “you’re good to go.”

On their way back to the dancefloor, they almost bump into Harvey.

He stares at both of them with a curious glint in his intelligent eyes and a barely-there smile tugging at the corners of his thin lips. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t comment on the fact he caught Roberto and Tonny sneaking out of a public toilet. It’s obvious what he thinks and it doesn’t require verbalisation.

With a jerky nod of his head, Harvey excuses himself and disappears into the bathroom they have just left.

“If Harvey is here then Alfie won’t be far off either.”

Roberto leans over to Tonny, shouting to be heard over the pulsing music. “Go, before you’re late for your job interview.”

Before Tonny can reply, Roberto pushes him in the direction of the open booths, lined up in the far corner of the club and reserved for only those who can afford that extra bit of privacy or are special guests of Harvey and Alfie.

The two of them have their own booth, luxuriously furnished and guarded by two burly bodyguards who make sure that nobody who isn’t invited sets foot into their little realm.

Even Roberto, who has let both brothers fuck him multiple times, sometimes simultaneously, is not always allowed in there.

Today is one of those days. He doesn’t even try, just watches as Tonny makes his way over to the bodyguards—back straight and head held high, just as Roberto has shown him—and is waved inside.

Roberto makes himself comfortable at the bar, the position allowing him a sneaky glance at the brothers’ private booth.

Harvey has returned by now and joins his more boisterous brother on the black leather couch before lighting himself a cigarette.

It’s impossible to overhear anything of what is discussed, but Roberto can still watch Tonny’s face, stoic and unmoving for once, so very different from his usual expression.

“Hey, gorgeous.”

The voice is so close to his ear, Roberto almost jumps in his seat and whips his head around in surprise.

A sleazy man is standing before him, his hair combed back and held into place by too much gel, his meaty fingers playing with a silver Motorola Razr. Roberto doesn’t need to look any further to know that this guy likes to pretend he has money.

Roberto knows the type: men who want to fuck pretty, young things but start to haggle when the boys demand their money. He avoids those men like the plague. The bit of cash it would make him is not worth the hassle.

“Sorry, I’m busy here,” he says firmly, leaving no room for discussion.

Or so one would think.

“You don’t look very busy to me,” the man argues. “Don’t you want to earn some money, beautiful?”

The man leans closer and Roberto’s nose is assaulted by the stinging smell of cheap booze and too much acqua di parma. He scrunches up his nose in disgust and scoots as far back as the high bar stool allows him.

“I don’t think you can afford me, mate. Get lost.”

The asshole is as thick as a brick wall and can’t take a damn hint.

When Roberto turns away, effectively ending the conversation, the man grabs him by his arm and yanks him off his chair.

“Come on, you little slut. I have the money and I know you let half of the people here fuck you already, so don’t act like I’m somehow below your standards.”

Roberto doesn’t point out that even if he had fucked everybody in this club but him, he would still be far below his standards.

“Is there a problem?”

Harvey’s low and therefore all the more imposing voice cuts through the thrumming bass and when Roberto turns, he’s standing right behind him, accompanied by his brother and Tonny who looks back and forth between Roberto and the man holding onto him.

Don’t do something stupid now, Roberto beseeches Tonny with his eyes.

The skinhead stays put, at least for now, but Roberto doesn’t fail to notice the nervous twitch of his left eye, or how he rhythmically clenches and unclenches his fist.

Dumbfounded, the man lets go of Roberto and plants himself in front of Harvey, his face pulled into a snarling, ugly visage.

“Piss off,” he spats, “this is none of your business.”

Roberto quickly glances at Harvey, the way his eyes narrow.

This guy is so fucked.

“It certainly is my business, considering this club belongs to me and my brother here. And we don’t want any trouble,” Harvey says, dangerously calm, while Alfie observes the whole exchange in silence.

It’s never a good sign when the roles are reversed and Harvey is the one who does all the talking.

“Really?” The man asks, not impressed and too stupid to realise the extent of the trouble he just has manoeuvred himself into. “Then you should teach your whores some manners.”

Roberto growls, but shuts his mouth with a click when Harvey motions for him to do so with a quick hand gesture.

“We’re a nightclub, not a brothel. Whatever this young man does to earn his money is none of our concern. However, he’s our guest here and we won’t allow any of our guests to be molested. Which is why I’d kindly ask you to leave now.”

“You’re kicking me out?!” the man barks, loud enough that a few of the other guests rear their heads to stare with unabashed curiosity.

“I’m asking you to leave,” Harvey repeats, voice tightly controlled. “I will not ask a second time.”

The man stares wide-eyed, his mouth hanging open in obvious shock while his intoxicated brain tries to make sense of the situation. Roberto can practically hear the rusty cogs turning.

When the man snaps his mouth shut and a spark of ill-tempered determination ignites in his otherwise dull eyes, Roberto knows that he’s about to do something incredibly stupid.

With a roar, the man launches at Harvey, fists already raised, when Tonny springs into unexpected action. He’s moving so fast, Roberto can’t even tell what exactly has happened when just a moment later, the man lies on the polished floor, clutching his bloody and likely broken nose.

Tonny stands over him, hands curled to fists still, his knuckles bruised, one foot firmly planted on the man’s bloated stomach. His face is calm, almost pensive.

Gone is the fumbling skinhead, gone his insecure laughter and nervous smile, replaced by the stranger Roberto has only caught a glimpse of in the bathroom.  
After a moment of heavy silence, two of Alfie's men step out of the shadows behind Harvey, haul the man up and, without a word, drag him to the entrance.

Roberto doesn't spare him another glance, transfixed by Tonny and the menacing aura he emits.

"Acceptable."

Both he and Tonny jump at Harvey's words which effectively shatter the heavy silence. It takes no longer than a blink of his eye and Tonny is back to being the lanky, somewhat naive idiot Roberto has come to know.

He smiles brightly at the praise, showing off his uneven teeth, and all but preens under the positive attention he's getting, the men laughing and patting him on the back.

Roberto doesn't say anything. He watches, brows furrowed and arms crossed, as Tonny playfully raises his fists in the air, pretending to punch an invisible foe.

He is definitely a thug, Roberto thinks, a lowlife, just like him, nothing special. And yet there is something about him, isn’t there? Maybe he too knows what it is like—to feel barely human at times.

Harvey leans against the counter, his fingers tapping out a brisk staccato rhythm against the shiny worktop. The bartender brings him his Highland Park and cradling the heavy tumbler he looks at Tonny over the rim of his glass, studying him as if he is a particularly complicated puzzle.

Alfie, standing further away, is chatting with a group of girls. Harvey catches his eye, then nods sharply toward their private booth, making his way there. Alfie follows him silently.

The job interview is over.


	7. I've Never Been This Far Away From Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long break between updates—RDC3 was quite exhausting and I got sick as well. Chifuyu saved the day and wrote most of chapter 7! 
> 
> Once I'm better I hope I can contribute a bit more than bad 1990s pop songs!
> 
> Also thank you so much [Supastag](https://archiveofourown.org/users/findo/pseuds/supastag) for your beta help!
> 
> * * *

_It don't matter to me_  
_All I wanted to be_  
_Was a million miles from here_  
_Somewhere more familiar_

(Kaiser Chiefs – Oh My God)

 

Somebody is yelling his name, banging their fists against the already shaky door of his apartment, tearing Roberto from blissful sleep.

Groaning, he heaves himself out of bed, hair standing up in all directions, his oversized shirt hanging from one shoulder as he makes his way to the door.

"Bloody hell." 

He rubs the last traces of sleep out of his eyes and pulls the door open with much more force than it warrants.

He's met with his neighbour’s visage, all big smile and wide eyes.

"You arsehole," Roberto just says and slams the door shut again.

Or at least he tries to. Annoyance is rising in the back of his throat, acidic like bile. Having met unexpected resistance, he looks down at the boot-clad foot nudged between the doorframe.

"Please, Roberto," Tonny begs, far more cheerful than anybody has any right to be on such a cold Saturday morning.

"Please, what?" is Roberto's hissed reply.

He has neither the patience nor the desire to indulge in whatever stupid triviality Tonny has decided to share with him now.

"Let me in," Tonny says as if it's the most obvious thing in the world, as if it doesn’t cross his mind once that he's not welcome here.

Rather than letting him in, Roberto would like to give it a second try and slam his door shut, maybe break Tonny's foot in the process. He would deserve it for waking him up after an exhausting night of sucking dick and taking it up the ass.

Unfortunately, if there is one thing Roberto has learned about Tonny, it's that he's a persistent little bugger. He doesn't even seem to register his foot being crushed in Roberto's doorframe.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Roberto mutters, more to himself than to Tonny, and finally pulls the door open.

With a speed he wouldn't have expected from him, Tonny leaps inside the small flat and closes the door behind him before he whips around and all but tackles Roberto.

"Are you out of your fucking mind?!" Roberto gasps as strong arms lift him up and pull him into a crushing hug that’s bound to leave bruises.

"I got it!" Tonny laughs, ignoring both Roberto's violent cursing and his fists beating against his chest and shoulders. "I got the job!"

After Roberto lands an especially vicious hit to Tonny's upper arm, the man finally lets him go and puts him down on his two feet, but the bright grin remains deeply etched into his features.

"Harvey and Alfie, they gave me a job!" he smirks.

"And why the fuck would I care?" Roberto groans and turns away to search for some underwear to put on. His hands are shaking as he makes a grab for a pair of boxers lying in a pile of clean but crumpled clothes and bites down on his lips, willing his fingers to still.

Fucking skinhead and his fucking lack of common sense and absolute disregard for physical boundaries.

Tonny keeps talking. He learns quickly for a dumbass, Roberto notes—his vocabulary is expanding, he’s using phrases he must have picked up from Alfie and his men, certain figures of speech and distinctive patterns. 

Roberto might have been impressed by it, if not for the throbbing headache pounding behind his eyes. Work last night has left its marks.

After the incident at the club Roberto met an older gay couple who picked him up to celebrate their anniversary. He fucked both of them in a cheap hotel room and they were pleased enough to take him with them to another club instead of just kicking him out. He was introduced to a bunch of party friends, all of them drunk and high on coke, all of them leering at him over the rim of their shot glasses. He sucked at least four dicks within an hour, his head bobbing up and down to the frantic beat of techno house reverberating in the sweat-filled air. 

He made good money that night, even though it did not come without a price: He’s dizzy from too much poppers and his nose is clogged from bad coke. None of which concerns Tonny who is all too eager to share the good news with him, as if they are old friends and not casual acquaintances at best.

Tonny reaches into the breast pocket of his oversized Adidas track jacket and pulls out a flask of vodka that he offers to Roberto. Roberto takes a big gulp, lets the alcohol burn his throat.

“Good money,” Tonny repeats.

The cold morning light seeps in from the outside.

“Thank you,” he says, a little softer.

Roberto crawls back to bed, plonks himself down on the covers. 

“You’re welcome,” he mumbles, ending the conversation by pressing his face into the pillows piled high on his bed, and closes his eyes.

He can still hear Tonny moving around, the old floorboards creaking underneath his sneaker soles, but he doesn’t actually leave.

Roberto cracks an eye open and turns his head just enough to throw a glance at Tonny, who is still standing in the middle of his room and awkwardly shuffles his feet.

“Was there something else you wanted?” he asks, lips curling into a lazy, malicious smile, “if you were hoping to get your dick wet then you’ll have to wait until the evening, sweetheart.”

Immediately, Tonny tenses up and lifts his hands, waving them around while shaking his head at the same time.

“No, no,” he laughs, strained and unconvincing, his eyes flickering from left to right, pointedly avoiding Roberto’s gaze.

It’s nothing new—Tonny’s near comical aversion to anything that could be construed as remotely homosexual—but it still amuses Roberto, who can’t resist teasing Tonny at every opportunity he gets.

“Wanted just to say thank you,” he goes on, rubbing the tattoo on the back of his head before he lapses into silence once more.

It drags on for too long, bordering on being uncomfortable and soon Roberto is tired of waiting for Tonny to get his shit together and say what he’s here for.

“You want to thank me?” he asks, rolling out of bed without waiting for a reply, “then buy me something to eat. I’m starving.”

Slipping into a pair of trainers, he makes a grab for both Tonny’s and his jacket and pulls the dumbfounded skinhead out of the apartment, down the creaky stairs and onto the streets.

Tonny endures it, too confused to argue, but pulls his hand from Roberto's grip as soon as they’re outside. Roberto lets him, but makes sure the skin sees how he rolls his eyes at the move.

"What?" he asks, zipping up his jacket and stuffing his cold hands into his pockets as he grins at Tonny. “Afraid somebody will call you a poof?” The sun is shining but the air is still ice cold and cutting mercilessly into every bit of exposed skin.

Roberto sneaks a glance at Tonny, wondering how he manages to seem so unaffected by the cold even though he’s wearing just a simple track jacket. Must be his Scandinavian blood. 

"They have other things to worry about. Mostly money. For sex, for drugs, you name it."

He laughs when Tonny returns his look with a slow, owlish blink, as if he hasn't got a clue what Roberto is talking about.

"Oh please, don't act all innocent. You did fucked up shit before, didn't you?" Roberto asks. "I saw it in that bathroom at the club, when you looked into the mirror."

Tonny's eyes darken at the memory and for a fleeting second the beast Roberto caught a glimpse of the other night threatens to break through the surface. Then, as if awakening from a dream, his gaze clears and he shrugs, neither denying nor admitting to Roberto's accusations, but his silence is confirmation enough.

Roberto doesn't ask again and leaves Tonny be, who follows him like an obedient puppy. His destination is one of the many greasy spoons that are scattered all over London and especially the shithole that is Brixton. It’s cheap, greasy food, but it’s filling and just the thing Roberto needs after a night of sucking dick and snorting coke.

The thick smell of old fat and burned coffee that greets them as soon as Roberto pushes the door to the small cafe open feels almost like home and he halts to take in the familiar scent.

It's a bitter-sweet pleasure. The owner is an Italian immigrant, much like his father. And much like his father he serves everything from a Full English breakfast to Italian pizza and pasta. Every visit is a reminder that he’s no longer welcome in his father’s dingy restaurant which smells so much like this cafe. The cafe where he spent most of his childhood at. And yet he can't resist coming here and allowing himself to reminisce just for a little while.

"It smells nice," Tonny says when they sit down, their table standing in a far corner of the cafe and facing the door so Roberto can see everyone who comes in or leaves.

"It smells like it could give me a heart attack," Roberto argues as he skips through the yellowing menu. “Which is exactly what I want.”

Tonny tilts his head and Roberto can see that there’s a question burning on the tip of his tongue.

"Food first, questions later, okay?" Roberto says before Tonny gets a chance.

He orders for the both of them, and Tonny seems to be glad, almost grateful that Roberto takes the decision of what to order away from him.

The time it takes for their orders to arrive is filled with silence. Tonny, who Roberto has only ever seen running his mouth without thinking, seems to take Roberto's orders quite seriously and stays quiet, only watching Roberto whenever he thinks he's not looking and turning away when Roberto meets his eyes, a teasing grin curling his full mouth.

It's an amusing little game, more so for him than for Tonny, Roberto is sure, and the longer it progresses, the bolder he gets: fluttering his lashes at Tonny, pulling his lower lip inbetween his teeth when he knows the other is watching.

He's contemplating running a foot along Tonny's thigh underneath the table when the waiter brings their dishes and puts the plates in front of them, spoiling Roberto's plans.

Tonny's eyes go wide at the sight of eggs, toast and bacon piled up high and Roberto can't suppress a giggle.

"What, you never had a full English breakfast?" he asks as he picks up a forkful of egg and beans.

It seems the plate full of food is even more enticing than Roberto's fluttering lashes: Tonny doesn't even look up when he shakes his head.

"No."

His voice is little more than an awed whisper and Roberto wonders how long it has been since Tonny last had a proper meal. In a way, he can relate. His first meal after being released from prison had been some stale chips and a day-old piece of deep-fried fish and yet it had tasted like heaven on his tongue.

"Then stop looking at it like you want to fuck it and start eating!" Roberto huffs as he spears a piece of mushroom with his fork.

He doesn't need to tell Tonny twice. After his initial hesitation, he digs into his food with an abandon Roberto has only ever seen on fellow inmates who had returned from isolation and had their first taste of real—if still disgusting—food for weeks. Tonny eats like them. Like a man who knows what it means to starve. Like a man who is afraid that the plate in front of him could be taken away at any moment.

His breakfast forgotten, Roberto watches until Tonny has cleared the whole plate, not a single crumb on it anymore, and then asks:

"What were you in prison for?"

With a clutter, Tonny's fork falls to the ground and he scrambles to pick it up, carefully avoiding Roberto's gaze while he does so.

When he sits up again, his eyes are lowered and his jaw is tense. He doesn't answer.

"So you were in prison," Roberto concludes, not the least bit surprised. "Is that the reason you came to Britain, because you wanted a fresh start? Get away from all that shit back home? Build a new life, get your son here, all that crap?"

There is no sympathy in his voice, no pity. Tonny is just one of many. Roberto knows the type: men who ran away from their past and are now trying to find a new future in a foreign land. Most of them end up right where they started: tangled up in illegal activities because that's the only thing they've ever learned.

Roberto is sure Tonny is no exception.

The skinhead nods, slowly, as if he's not quite sure if that's the correct answer—if there could ever be one.

 

"And how do you want to do that?" Roberto inquires further. "You have a job alright, but what else do you have apart from a criminal record? Contacts? Friends? Any savings? No?"

Roberto huffs when Tonny softly shakes his head, hands still in his lap, his palms rubbing over the washed out fabric of his jeans. He looks around the almost empty café, his broad shoulders hunched over, pressing himself firmly into the stained cushions of the squeaking seat.

"Stop that," Roberto immediately reprimands him. "Nobody here gives a shit if you’ve got a record."

Tonny doesn't look quite convinced, his pale brows furrowed, but he sits up just a little straighter and puts his hands back on the table.

"Need the papers," Tonny says while picking at what looks like a dried ketchup stain on the plastic top of the table. "So Ivar can go to school here."

"Too bad they usually don’t give custody to criminals. And that’s what you are, after all. I guess getting out of Denmark wasn’t even about starting a new life in a foreign country. It was more about not ending up in prison again, huh? They’re looking for you over in Denmark, aren’t they?"

Tonny flinches at the harsh words and Roberto rolls his eyes at him. 

"Come on, you think nobody would notice?"

From the look on Tonny's face it's possible he thought it would be that easy and Roberto has to bite down on his tongue to keep from laughing out loud.

What an idiot.

Roberto leans back in his seat and crosses his legs as he eyes the man sitting across him.

"You know," he says casually, swallowing his last piece of bacon, "I could help you. I have friends who can get you all the papers you need."

Immediately, Tonny's whole face lights up and an expression of hope replaces the solemn look he wore after Roberto's harsh words.

"Really?" he asks and his hands twitch as if to reach out for Roberto before Tonny thinks better of it and holds onto the edge of the table instead.

"Really," Roberto confirms, "but that'll cost you money. A lot of it. You’d need a new name, a whole new identity."

"I can get money," Tonny asserts enthusiastically, "I have a job. Remember?"

"Oh, I do remember." 

Roberto smiles as he leans forward, propped up on his elbows. 

"You just have to save some money and then you can bring your son here. Easy as that."

Tonny returns the smile with one of his own, toothy grins and Roberto is caught off-guard for a moment.

He looks younger like this, with his eyes shining so brightly and the lines around his mouth deepening only because of pure joy. It’s hard to believe this man sitting in front of him, with a smile so bright it’s challenging the sun, has done time.

"You alright?" Tonny asks after some time, the brilliant smile fading.

"Yeah, I'm alright," Roberto is quick to put him off.

The moment of comfortable ease is gone as quickly as it has come and Roberto feels the breakfast he has wolfed down before settle heavy in his stomach.

"Roberto?" Tonny asks after some time, the consonants rolling from his tongue with a slight drawl. 

"Who's Dave?"

Immediately, Roberto tenses in his seat, his hands balling into fists underneath the table.

"None of your fucking business," he hisses out between clenched teeth.

Dave is a nobody. Dave is a bad memory pushed back into the farthest corners of his mind.

Tonny—curse his thick skull—presses on, not the least bit intimidated by Roberto's sudden shift in mood.

"Alfie said he was in prison. Did you meet there?"

Roberto bites down on the tip of his tongue until the flesh is numb and he can taste blood in his mouth.

"Didn't I say it's none of your fucking business?" 

Roberto glares at Tonny.

There is no judgement in the skinhead's eyes, only an endless curiosity enhanced by the slight tilt of his head.

"It's alright, Roberto," Tonny tries to console him, completely oblivious to the true reasons for Roberto's discomfort, "sometimes, we do things we regret later. Stupid things, ja?"

_You don't have any idea what kind of stupid things I did._

If Tonny were aware of what he had done to earn himself a place behind bars his compassion would be limited.

"It's alright," Tonny repeats, as if spouting the same old empty phrases over and over again makes them true, "you're here now."

Roberto looks at him from underneath a lock of unruly hair, grim amusement in his eyes. "And _here_ is a shithole."

To his credit, Tonny only shrugs and returns Roberto's thin smile with a mischievous grin of his own.

"You wanted to come here."

For a moment, Roberto can only blink at the other man, then breaks into laughter so loud it earns him a few nasty looks from other guests.

"So the dumbass knows how to make a joke," Roberto says and lifts his half-empty glass of cola in a mock toast, "congratulations."

If the insult bothers Tonny then he doesn't show it, taking the rare compliment without questioning it instead and bows his head.

“Tak,” he says and raises his own glass, mirroring Roberto’s motions.

“Whatever,” Roberto huffs as he sets down his emptied glass, still grinning from ear to ear.

Without another word, he gets up and heads over to the counter to pay for both of them. When Tonny opens his mouth—no doubt to protest—Roberto silences him with another wave of his hand and grumbles.

"You'll need to keep your money together, idiot."

He doesn't turn to witness Tonny's reaction when he heads for the door, but the elated tap-tap of footsteps behind him tells Roberto everything he needs to know.


	8. If I Stopped Lying I'd Just Disappoint You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks as usual to our awesome beta Supastag! <3
> 
> * * *

_So unimpressed but so in awe_  
_Such a saint but such a whore_  
_So self aware, so full of shit_  
_So indecisive, so adamant_

(Robbie Williams – Come Undone)

 

In all the months Roberto has been living in this shithole of a flat it has never occurred to him that his shithole might once have been part of a larger shithole. Maybe less of a shithole and more of an actual apartment.

He isn't even the one who finds out but Tonny who had gone and bought some furniture and pictures to hang up at his place.

It all starts with him pushing around shit along the wall between his and Roberto’s flat. Roberto flings a shoe against the wall a few times, annoyed at all the noise Tonny is making. He can hear him cursing in Danish and for a moment there is blissful silence before the clamour starts all over again.

Around noon the bloody idiot starts driving nails into the wall.

At quarter past three, Roberto has had enough. He doesn’t even bother getting properly dressed, just stomps over to Tonny’s flat in underwear and boots where he kicks against the front door.

“What. The. Fuck,” he yells, accentuating every word with a kick. “What the fuck, Tonny?”

When the door finally opens, Roberto is greeted with the sight of Tonny in nothing but a pair of ratty briefs.

“Hej,” Tonny says, grinning, “nice seeing you! What’s up?”

Roberto doesn’t return the friendly greeting. 

“Are you out of your fucking mind? I’m trying to get some sleep!” he hisses.

“It’s late afternoon,” Tonny says but, after a look at Roberto’s unamused expression, quickly adds: “Long night?”

Roberto is glaring at him still and doesn’t say another word, letting his expression speak for itself. Tonny shrugs, somehow managing to look penitent, and offers Robero a cigarette. 

“Coffee?” he asks.

After a while Roberto nods and Tonny’s face brightens. He opens the door a little wider and Roberto shuffles inside, the fag tucked behind his ear.

There’s an oak cabinet standing in the middle of the living room and the little table Tonny uses to eat at has been moved to the connecting wall. This time, instead of dirty dishes, a hammer and a shot glass full of nails stand on it.

Meanwhile Tonny is putting the kettle on and spoons instant coffee into two tea cups.

“No milk, no sugar,” Tonny says apologetically as he pushes one of the cups into Roberto’s hands. He takes it without a word of thanks.

His attention lies elsewhere: A large framed print of a black and white nude photograph of Kate Moss is leaning against the wall—Tonny follows Roberto’s gaze and points at Kate’s tits with his cup.

“I love Kate,” he raves, “so beautiful.”

“You wanna hang that up?” Roberto scrutinizes the poster with open disgust. Do they sell these prints at Ikea now?

“Yeah,” Tonny says, using his cup again to point at the wall, “it’ll look good.”

“Hmm,” Roberto cradles his own cup and grimaces when he tastes the coffee. His dad used to make thick, oily, bitter espresso, not a hint of sourness. This coffee tastes like battery acid, but at least it’s hot.

While he’s sipping his coffee he throws another look at the Kate Moss poster. While he didn't expect Tonny’s grasp of the arts to be sophisticated he didn’t expect it to be this bad either.

Tonny admires Kate a while longer before he puts down his cup and climbs on the table, scratching his bum. Roberto grimaces. Charming. After marking a point where he wants the poster to hang, Tonny begins to drive another nail into the wall.

“I want to make a nice room for Ivar,” he explains and motions for Roberto to hand him the poster when he is done with the nails.

“How does it look?” he asks when the poster is in place, hanging slightly askew.

“Seriously? It looks awful,” Roberto says. 

Tonny purses his lips and flips Roberto the bird. Roberto laughs, amused, while Kate is gazing down at both of them.

“There is other pictures,” Tonny says before he continues to mark the wall with his pencil, knocking against it once in a while.

Roberto looks around and sure enough there are other framed posters, one in particular catches his attention: a blond woman sitting astride a bike, wearing leather pants and a bikini top. She is surrounded by three smirking guys.

Tonny turns around and grins, evidently mistaking Roberto’s appalled expression for admiration.

“Yeah, I bought some beautiful pictures. I like photos,” Tonny remarks with the pride of an enthusiastic but misguided art connoisseur.

“Wow, I really hope that was ironic,” Roberto mumbles, before passing the poster to Tonny who carefully places it against the table, “in fact I hope all your posters are ironic.”

Tonny stops hammering and lowers his arms.

“Iron?”

Roberto rolls his eyes. “Nevermind.” 

Tonny rolls his eyes as well and Roberto realises that he’s imitating him. Cheeky little shit. 

Then Tonny goes still. 

He says “Can you hear that?” and raises his hand to knock on the wall.

“What?”

Tonny keeps knocking, puts his ear to the wall and scratches at the wallpaper.

Roberto finds an armchair and, throwing a pile of folded laundry onto the floor, sits down.

Tonny knocks again. 

“What are you on about?” Roberto asks.

“Can’t you hear that?” Tonny doesn’t let Roberto’s harsh tone discourage him. 

“This isn’t wall,” he says. 

And indeed, Roberto can hear the difference now. It’s the echoing sound of wood.

Tonny begins to peel off strips of wallpaper while Roberto puts his legs up on the chair, intent on just watching and is surprised to see Tonny was right. Hidden underneath layers of old wallpaper and dry adhesive is a door.

“It’s a door!” 

Tonny keeps removing more of the paper, his whole face alight with excitement.

“I’m pretty sure we’re not supposed to do that,” Roberto says.

“I can paint it,” Tonny argues. “Or buy new tapestry.”

“Wallpaper,” Roberto automatically corrects him.

“Yes, that.”

Tonny doesn’t stop and soon a keyhole emerges from underneath the layers of wallpaper.

“No handle,” Tonny points out the obvious and shoves at the door, which, to their mutual surprise gives a little. They both flinch and freeze when they hear plaster crumbling and trickling. 

Tonny the idiot has probably kicked something loose, and now the entire house will collapse over their heads.

When nothing happens Tonny puts his ear onto the door and shoves again. 

“Really, I’m pretty sure we’re not supposed to do that,” Roberto warns a second time.

“You could help me,” Tonny says. He kicks firmly against the door. 

“Sure,” Roberto says, not moving from his seat.

Tonny walks to the end of the room, then turns around and charges at the door like a bull. 

Alarmed, Roberto jumps, almost falling off his chair.

“Tonny, do-”

With another swift kick, accompanied by a resounding creak and a nasty tearing sound, the door gives way. 

“-n’t.”

Of course there was wallpaper on Roberto’s side as well—which has been torn off in large chunks. Bits of plaster and wall are stuck on the stiff paper and white plaster dust is swirling in the air .

“You bloody...moron.”

Really, there’s no use in getting mad at a dumb cunt such as Tonny. He’s little more than a happy labrador wagging his tail.

Roberto sighs and puts the coffee down, then examines the damage: bits of wallpaper are dangling from the new door frame, and there are wood splinters covering his floor.

 

It’s not as if his flat was incredibly appealing before but now it more closely resembles a war zone. He walks through the new opening straight into his room.

Tonny peeks through the hole, looking at the white dust over Roberto’s piles of clothing.

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly.

Roberto waves him off while lighting a fag. 

Somewhere his Nokia phone is ringing, but he can’t find it. At least Tonny makes himself useful by helping him look. By the time they dig it up from underneath a pile of dirty laundry, there are three missed calls and several messages, all from Frankie. Work is calling and Roberto better make himself presentable. For now, his vandalised flat will have to wait.

Just as Roberto is squeezing himself into the tiniest pair of rhinestone covered shorts he can find—not without brushing off pieces of plaster and wallpaper first—the phone rings again. 

“Are you ready?” Frankie asks without preamble, “I called you before. Did you get my messages?”

“Yeah, I think I’ve got them?”

“You think? Brilliant, mate.”

“I just got up, why is everyone so fucking annoying today?”

“Come on, move your ass. I’m almost at your place. We’re going to Justin’s. Fashion guy, loads of coke, loads of cash. You don’t wanna miss that. They—you know, Justin Wong and Thomas—asked me to bring you.”

“Who the fuck is Thomas?”

“Justin’s new boyfriend. Heard he’s married, has kids somewhere, whatever, he’s into partying and he’s seen you at the Diamond…they’ve been carousing since yesterday. Possibly longer.”

Frankie continues his chatter while Roberto tries to blow a stubborn curl of hair out of his face that simply refuses to be moved. That is, until Tonny takes the cigarette from him and pushes the lock of hair behind Roberto’s ear. His thumb grazes his skin and the shell of his ear.

Roberto blinks.

“Hey, Earth to Roberto, are you still there?” Frankie’s voice sounds tinny coming from his phone. Roberto ignores him, distracted.

He catches Tonny’s gaze, trailing down from Roberto’s eyes to his lips, stopping there for a moment, but then he looks away, swallowing.

Roberto plucks the cigarette from Tonny’s fingers and takes a deep drag.

“ROBERTO?” Frankie screams.

Roberto clears his voice and turns away from Tonny. 

“Jesus fucking Christ, I’ll be down in ten, ok?” he screams back.

Roberto puts on stockings, then knee high patent leather boots.

All the while, Tonny is watching him from where he’s leaning against their new door frame, his expression equal parts confusion and intrigue.

“Not cold?” he asks.

“I’ll be in a car, and then I’ll be inside all night,” Roberto slips into a rabbit fur jacket.

“You look like a woman,” Tonny suddenly says, his voice bitter with unexpected accusation.

Roberto checks his appearance in the mirror beside the door.

“So?”

“Do you want … to be a woman?”

Roberto turns around to look at Tonny—his simple face, his dumb eyes, that weird curved mouth. He feels as if he has been doused with cold water. And yet, he shouldn’t be surprised. Tonny is still a skinhead after all, what did he expect?

 

“I don’t have time—I’m off to work,” he says coldly.

On his way down he berates himself—he should’ve had a better comeback. People say dumb shit like that all the time and usually he doesn’t give it a second thought, but that crap coming from Tonny upsets him somehow.

To top his day off, Frankie is late. Of course. 

Roberto is through his second cigarette by the time he finally turns up in a car stuffed with people. Frankie lowers the window before the car has come to a stop.

“Woooo, looking hot there, love,” he yells. 

Gingerly Roberto steps out on the curb, swaying his hips. The window in the back goes down as well and a girl with wild, pink curls and a canary yellow jacket appears.

“Hey hey Robbie,” she cries out, as if determined to let the entire neighbourhood know his name, waving with a bottle of raspberry juice.

“Hey Zoe,” Roberto winks and blows her a kiss which she pretends to catch and store away in the back pockets of her incredibly tight hot pants.

“Fuck, I’m not gonna fit,” he says to Frankie.

“That’s what he said,” a voice pipes up from somewhere inside the car and everyone groans at the horrible joke.

“You can sit on Ivy’s lap,” the girl who called him “Robbie” offers while opening the door for him.

Roberto shrugs, then crawls inside. 

It’s a forty-five minute drive, but after Frankie receives a text saying they’ve run out of ice and tonic at the party they have to stop at a Tesco’s and fill the boot with Schweppes bottles and bags of ice.

“I hope this party is worth all the hard work,” Roberto grumbles although he has not lifted a finger, except for when he opened a Red Bull can. He’s lying stretched out over three laps, legs propped up against the window. Ivy is absentmindedly combing his curls with her long fingers.

“It’s going to be legendary,” Frankie says, “these guys are filthy rich.”

“So rich they hardly remember what it’s like to be human,” Ivy says dreamily.

Roberto looks up at her, faintly intrigued, but she looks out of the window at the passing estates.

The property is a battlefield.

The villa itself is certainly imposing: one of these buildings people like Roberto usually only see featured in snobbish architecture mags. _Architectural Digest_ fodder. Lots of warm grey concrete contrasting with wood facades, floor-length windows and glass bricks: obviously belonging to people who have vacationed in Southeast Asia and want to bring the “summery atmosphere” of the resorts back to Britain.

The state of the lawn in the front is a stark contrast to the expensive exterior of the house: littered with empty plastic cups, straws, trays, pieces of discarded clothing, even a three legged chair. A man wearing nothing but holographic silver leggings is snoring under an overturned bike.

They have to step around puddles of puke.

Someone has rolled toilet paper around the trees and over the bushes. At some point during the night people must have thrown beer bottles from the balcony: the patio underneath is littered with green and brown shards.

Through one of the large windows Roberto can see people moving. It slides open a moment later and French electro spills out into the otherwise serene suburban neighbourhood. A gaggle of party-ers leans out and waves at him.

“They brought the ice, finally!”

Roberto hears cheering in between the music.

“Oh my god, you saved our lives,” someone cries out.

Roberto has no problem whatsoever with taking all the credit and he curtsies, pointing at the car behind him where Frankie, Ivy and the rest are busy unloading the boot. More cheering ensues. 

“I live to serve,” he chirps.

“You didn’t do shit,” he hears Frankie protest.

He turns around, watching Frankie shoulder the six-packs and as many ice bags he can, and winks at him. 

“Shut up, Frankie!” 

“Brilliant,” a guy yells at Roberto, waving a prosecco bottle.

A half-asian guy in white slacks and a lavender shirt pulls him in. Roberto sinks into the embrace and finds himself surrounded by the smell of day-old sweat and Gaultier’s homme cologne.

“So so glad you could make it, sweetie!”

Roberto demonstratively bites his lower lip then grabs the man’s crotch.

“Hey Justin,” he cooes, “good to see you.”

Justin laughs.

“Ah, you amazing, wonderful slut—come on in, I’ll have Tom give you some refreshments and then I’ll introduce you to a couple of my friends who want to have some fun tonight—if you’re up for it, of course.”

Roberto smirks, sucking on his thumb. “Can’t wait,” he says as huskily as possible. 

“Hey, a little help here?” Frankie calls after them, his arms laden with bags of ice. The girls behind him carry the tonic bottles, struggling a little with the staggering weight.

Roberto waves, pretending not to hear, before he casually turns his back on them and walks over the threshold.

If the outside is a battlefield, the inside resembles a battlefield that has been torched, doused and then torched again. 

Two women with turquoise tiaras and pink ballet tutus are asleep on the sofa, wrapped in an orange cover with a zebra pattern. He walks over, plucks a tiara off one of the girl’s heads and puts it on his own.

A group of Asian boys is dancing in the middle of the living room, their brand-new Y3 sneakers squeaking on the wooden floor boards. They must have arrived earlier already. Roberto can imagine all too well how Justin will look at the black rubber scuff marks in a few days, when he’s sober and awake: frowning, disapproving.

A few others are sitting at the far end of the room, leaning against the wall, talking feverishly past one another. Two of them give each other neck massages. They’re probably high on E or coke. Two boys hug each other, talking in low voices, their faces mere inches apart. E then, Roberto decides.

“Thought you’d be coming with Alfie and Harvey,” a voice behind him says.

It’s Ellen, one of the girls who usually hangs out at the Queen. In the same moment, Ivy passes by, arms slung around one of the Asian boys. Roberto throws him a kiss as a greeting, and he responds with a toothy grin and the peace sign.

“They wanted to come over in the morning already—guess they went home and to bed instead,” Ivy tells Ellen.

“Okay. Wow. I think I’ll get a cab to the Queen then,” Ellen says, “most of the guys here are gay and I’m not into that electro shit.”

“Suit yourself,” Roberto easily dismisses her, walking away as he spots Justin and his new beau on the dancefloor. He’ll earn good money tonight, with Justin, Tom, and their friends. If he’s lucky then even Alfie and Harvey will join in the fun once they arrive. Roberto has no doubt that they will turn up sooner or later. They love to hang out with Justin and don’t usually miss any of his parties. Not that Ellen needs to know. Recently Roberto has lost one too many clients to her. Maybe she’s prettier, maybe she’s better at sucking cock. He doesn’t really care, just doesn’t want to share his earnings with her. 

Tom throws his arms around Roberto when Justin introduces him.

“You really are incredibly beautiful,” he screams over the music. Justin bobs his head in agreement, grinning.

Roberto, too lazy to scream back, sticks his tongue out and starts dancing. Someone puts a drink in his hand and he sways his hips to the music. Immediately, people start looking at him. 

Roberto strategically picks a tall, devastatingly beautiful girl to dance with, grinding his hips into hers. The circle around them widens, and when the girl doesn’t pull away he gets bolder. At some point during their dance he can see himself in one of the mirrors on the opposite wall, all flushed cheeks and red lips, glowing skin, a perfect contrast to the dark-skinned beauty he is grinding against. Just as the track ends they can hear the faint sound of cars pulling into the driveway and tyres rolling over gravel. 

Roberto joins Justin and Tom who walk over to the window to look at the new arrivals. Several shiny Phaetons park neatly beside each other. Roberto glances around, suspecting Tonny will be in one of them. As the new boy he’ll probably be stuffed with four or five other men in the vehicles in the far back. But then Tonny gets out of the front of Harvey’s car, wearing a simple black suit and shirt. A few of the girls wave at him.

They’re ignored. With single-minded purpose, Tonny walks to the back and opens the doors for both brothers.

Not bad for the new guy Roberto has to admit. Harvey usually only lets the men who have worked for him the longest and proven to be the most loyal, ride with him.

“What a brilliant party—everyone come and say hi,” Alfie calls out, and people around Roberto oblige.

“The new guy is hot,” Justin comments, scrutinising Tonny with half-lidded eyes.

“He’s a skinhead. Probably homophobic as fuck,” Tom says in a testy tone behind him.

“Not after he’s met me,” Justin retorts, smiling at Tonny who looks up, frowning ever so slightly. Upon seeing Roberto his expression brightens and he waves cheerily before entering the house.

Justin throws him a glance.

“Not that homophobic then, hm?” he teases. 

Roberto shrugs and leans back against the window, arms defiantly crossed over his chest. 

“A friend of yours? What’s his name?” 

God, Justin can be an annoying stubborn shit when he sees something he wants.

“Svans,” Roberto tells him.

Behind him the music is picking up again. One of the Asian boys has hijacked the DJ-pult, and the tracks get a bit softer and mellower, suitable for the evening and to give people a reprieve from an afternoon full of long, fast tracks. 

“Sven?” Justin leans closer.

“Svans” Roberto corrects him, “He’s Danish.”

“Wow, awesome!” Justin enthuses.

Alfie and Harvey appear upstairs and are immediately crowded by other guests. A few of the people who have been sleeping in the corner stir at the commotion and slowly return to the world of the living. With renewed enthusiasm they dust off their clothes and re-join the party. 

Following the brothers are Tonny and three other guys, all in the same suits and shirts. 

After Alfie and Harvey have hugged Justin and Tom and exchanged pleasantries, Alfie lays a heavy arm around Tonny’s neck and pulls him forward, pressing a kiss onto his forehead.

“And this one—he’s my new favourite boy,” he says, “started last week but I can already tell he’s the best I ever had.”

Justin pushes his hips forward, and grabs Tonny’s hand.

“Hi! I’ve heard a lot about you, Svans!” he greets him.

Tonny’s expression darkens. He straightens himself and lets his neck and his knuckles crack.

“What?” he asks, baring long teeth.

“Who’s Sven?” Harvey asks, distracted by an incoming text message, “I thought your name’s Tonny?”

“What did you say? What did you call me?” Tonny asks again, louder.

Alfie is clearly confused. 

Justin raises both hands in a placating gesture. “Look, I’m sorry I thought that was your name!”

All the while, Roberto is stirring his drink with a finger, observing the whole scene with detached amusement.

After a moment of tension Tonny steps back behind Alfie, remembering his place.

“Tonny,” he just says.

“Sorry, man,” Justin apologises, a hint of panic in his voice, “your friend over there said your name’s Svans!”

Justin points at Roberto and immediately, all eyes are on him. He returns the questioning looks with a tiny wave and a smile. Tonny pretends to adjust his lapels, imperceptibly flipping Roberto the bird. 

“What? What’s going on?” Alfie looks from one to the other.

“Nothing, just go and get yourself a drink,” Harvey sighs, levelling an admonishing stare at Roberto.

“But who is Svans?”

“Alfie … never mind, just go.”

Alfie shrugs and then disappears in the crowd.

As he passes Roberto, he asks him as well: “Do you know who Svans is?”

“No idea,” Roberto says, sipping his drink, “Justin had too much coke, never mind him.”

Alfie pats his shoulder a few times then continues to wander around the room in search for cocktails.

Roberto is immediately joined by Tonny.

“So,” he lays an arm around Roberto’s shoulder, “someone knows a little Danish, hm?”

“Someone, but certainly not Justin,” Roberto says.

“No, not Justin,” Tonny confirms, sucking in his breath between his teeth, “but a certain little shit I know.”

They watch the writhing bodies on the dance floor in companionable silence, until Roberto can’t help but level a glance at Tonny and they both start laughing at the same time.

“You’re a mean one, Roberto,” Tonny says under his breath.

“Yeah yeah, but you like it,” Roberto snorts.

“Eh,” Tonny agrees, with a voice so soft Roberto hardly hears it over the hammering bass of the music.

***

When parties are going on for days on end they, at one point, inevitably enter a weird, somewhat transcendental stage. They lose the connective tissue of reality. They become segments, cut-off scenes developing independently from each other. Every room becomes its own world. You sway with your mates in the living room to a remix of DJ Krush’s Jaku. Then you go into the kitchen, to get a drink, to find something to eat, but join the groups gathered around the table, befriend some Ukrainian and Nigerian models, and a moment or maybe an hour later you find yourself in the onyx-tiled bathroom on the ground floor, sitting with your back against a black glossy mirror and listening to Alfie’s boys discuss footie.

Always a sea of faces. 

Roberto’s eyes dart through the crowd until he finds Tonny, standing close to Alfie and Harvey. Whenever Alfie needs something, anything, Tonny steps closer, tilts his head so Alfie doesn’t need to scream through the music and readily offers whatever he wants, a lighter, a drink. At least twice Roberto watches Tonny roll a blunt with quick, efficient moves, shake it, then hand it to Harvey. 

Roberto can see the appeal. When Tonny keeps his mouth shut, doesn’t laugh like a fucking moron and is wearing that black suit he’s coming across as a quietly threatening presence, a loaded weapon. Alfie loves that. He loves appearances. He loves his D&G suits, his leather shoes. He once whipped Roberto with a belt that had cost more than the annual rent of his flat. Tonny fits right in. Tonny is the perfect backdrop to Alfie’s grand performance of underworld gangster boss.

Startled, he realises that Tonny is looking straight at him and Roberto flips him the bird before he moves on to another room with better music. Tonny grins broadly but before Alfie can see it he remembers to school his features into his doberman-like mask.

Justin is still sulking but Tom invites Roberto to dance with them. They make out a little, but it’s more show than real desire. 

“Would you like to model?” Tom screams into his left ear.

Roberto has heard that a hundred times. You’re so pretty you should model. Are you an actor? You should be famous.

In a way he is famous. If only they knew. 

He lifts both his arms and gives Tom a thumbs up, grinning. 

“You should totally model, you’re so so beautiful,” Tom slurs.

Roberto pretends not to hear and twirls around, moving discreetly away from Justin and Tom.

The music, some house track with horrific vocals, stops. After a few moments, in which people loll around the dance floor, synthesizer chords echo through the room, then the beep of a voice mail recorder is being looped. Roberto perks up when he recognises the hook and begins to dance more energetically.

“Finally some proper music,” he calls out, for once genuinely cheerful. Maybe the party isn’t absolute shit after all.

He sings along to the track, surprised that he still knows the lyrics by heart.

“Oh my god, I love these classics,” a boy beside him shouts.

“But this is so old!’ the girl he is dancing with shouts back.

And just like that, Roberto’s moment of carefreeness crumbles. He stops and stares at the couple on the dancefloor. They don’t notice him, just keep on dancing, laughing, enjoying themselves.

He has forgotten.

How old is this? When was the last time he has heard that track? It feels like …a year ago, it couldn’t have been much longer. 

Wasn’t it last year? When was it? How much time did pass since then and now? 

He feels fear rearing its ugly head, a familiar beast, whispering of the lost years, of the time he wasn’t part of this world. He doesn’t want to know.

1996.

They were at a mate’s house who’d been a Junior Vasquez and Charles Cox fan, laughing at the ‘If Madonna calls—I’m not here’ line.

It’s 2004.

Roberto looks around, bewildered. Holy shit, it’s 2004. 

He lost all these years. Seven in total. Not that much really, but so many things can happen in seven years. So many things _did_ happen. When he went to prison he was a kid. When he got out, he was a child no longer. Other people went to college during those years, studied, partied, had their first jobs, their first apartments. The friends he went to school with are married and have children now. (Some are already divorced again.) Now they are no longer his friends, just shadows of the past. 

Roberto shakes his head, willing the fear threatening to suffocate him away. He should be used to it by now, to these infrequently recurring thoughts. He just needs a drink. A drink and maybe a line or two to dissolve the unease. 

He collides with a suited chest. 

“Alfie wants you,” Tonny says, gripping Roberto’s arm and steers him through the crowd. 

“Is it party time?” Roberto asks dismissively.

Tonny gives him a sideways glance, then nods briskly. 

“Party time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Svans means faggot in Danish (so says Google Translate)
> 
> The song Roberto hears at the party is Junior Vasquez' 1996 hit If Madonna Calls.


	9. All Those Lights They Will Turn Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many, many thanks to our amazing beta Supastag! <3 At least my part of the writing wouldn't be readable without her help!

_I guess I'm not that far_  
_I'm at the point of no return_  
_Just watch me burn_  


(Madonna - Let It Will Be) 

On Tonny's seventh birthday his mother brought Viennese pastry when she came home from work. Her hair was still teased into a big puffy cloud, held in place by too much hairspray. She was wobbling on her high heels, already drunk from cheap champagne. She was laughing as she balanced the huge paper bag in her hand, nearly dropping it twice as she tried to open the front door with her left hand.

When Tonny ran up to her, dressed in his pyjamas, she laughed even louder and put the paper bag down to hug him, lift him up and swirl him around. 

"Oof,” she said, exaggerating playfully, "you’re so heavy, you’re breaking your poor mom’s back.” 

Behind her stood Malte, one of her regulars who came over quite often, sometimes to repair things in their house, sometimes to talk to his mom, or so she said. He held a plastic bag with beer and wine in one hand, a teddy bear in the other, which he waved at Tonny. 

"Happy birthday, big man," he singsonged, clearly drunk. Tonny never minded when Malte was drunk—he got funnier and nicer when he drank. Of all the uncles he had, Malte was his favourite, always treating him like a grown-up, always speaking to him and being kind, even when others weren’t. 

When his mother wanted put him down again, Tonny closed his eyes and refused to let go. She gave in easily enough, she always did, and carried him to the kitchen where she sat him on the counter, pushing the dirty plates on it discreetly into the sink. Malte sang Happy Birthday while he busied himself with arranging pastries on a big glass plate that he had dusted off with his sleeve beforehand. 

The doorbell rang and his mother got up. Tonny could hear Birgit, his mother’s friend. They always worked together and on the rare days they both were off, Birgit came over with a bottle of vodka stuffed into her faux leather handbag. Then they talked and talked and talked, only pausing long enough to bend down and sniff the coffee table. Tonny had no idea why they would do that. He even asked Birgit once if it smelled funny. She had laughed at him and said no, that it just made them feel good, cackling so loud that his mother asked if she had hit her head. 

When Birgit entered the kitchen she was barely visible behind the big box she was carrying. Malte took it off her, kissing her on both cheeks in greeting. 

Teetering on her high-heeled boots she walked over to Tonny and he sank into the sweet smelling, embrace of her fake mink coat. "Here’s our birthday boy! Look, you’re a man now!" she cooed. 

Pride welled up inside Tonny’s chest at her words. 

Then Jonas, another of mother’s and Birgit’s "friends" arrived. He was a very special man—after his second visit he had brought a small orange TV and set it up in Tonny’s room. It was black and white and his mom complained a lot because now there was a cable running from Tonny’s room to the socket in their living room, but she never took the TV away. From then on, every time Jonas came to visit, he’d give Tonny chocolate and tell him after some minutes to go and watch TV in his room. Tonny didn’t mind. He didn’t like the noises his mother made when she had her friends over anyway. 

"You have to take care of your mom now," Jonas said. "You have to protect her. She has taken care of you but you’re not a baby anymore." 

As time went on, more and more people arrived and everyone came over to where Tonny sat on the counter and hugged and squeezed him, calling him a big man and handing him presents. 

Soon they had huddled on the big sofa in the living room. Jonas kept fiddling with the antenna of the TV, trying and failing to improve the blurry image. Tonny sat on Birgit’s lap, while she was smoking cigarette after cigarette. 

Malte brought the cake—Tonny knew it had been in the big box Birgit had carried before but he still acted surprised. There were candles on it, seven in total, and when Tonny blew them out everyone cheered. His mother cut him a big slice with lots of sweet cream and berries on it and handed it to him with another kiss to his cheek. Life was good that day. 

When it got dark, Tonny’s mother, already drunk, put her favourite record on and swayed with Tonny in her arms, singing along to Eik Skaløe’s ‘Itsi Bitsi’. Later she gently lowered him back onto the sofa, and Malte put his large arm around him. 

"Your mum is lucky to have such a grown-up boy like you," he said, and Tonny beamed, light-headed with happiness. 

He must have fallen asleep in Malte’s arms because he awoke with a start. Someone was banging at the door. There was yelling. More banging. 

"Fucking hell, Ellen, open the door, he’s my kid!" 

Someone—Malte—scooped him up. 

"I’ll deal with this asshole," Jonas cursed. 

"Fuckin loser, you fucking asshole," Birgit screamed and kicked against the door, "leave Ellen and Tonny alone, you sick fuck!" 

Then their neighbour’s voice yelled from upstairs, "If this racket doesn’t stop I’ll call the police!" 

"Did you hear, you fucking retard, the police will come and get you," Birgit shrieked. 

Jonas rolled his sleeves up, suddenly looking very dark and angry, but he didn’t move to get up from the sofa. Nobody did. 

Finally, Ellen staggered to the door. 

"I can’t believe it," she mumbled. 

"Don’t open the door," Birgit said, but Ellen only hissed. "He’s gonna turn up with more of his boys, what am I supposed to do?" 

Tonny clung to Malte who held him tight. "Don’t worry," he whispered into Tonny’s ear, "he’s not gonna get you. He’s a bad guy, ok? You remember that, right?" 

Tonny wasn’t sure. He had only vague memories of his father, blurred images of a man with angry eyes and a loud voice ... but was he bad? 

Ellen opened the door to reveal his father Smeden holding a baseball bat in his hand. Behind him was Uncle Red and a few men Tonny didn’t know. 

"Hej Ellen," Uncle Red said sheepishly, "sorry about the time, but Smeden here thought we should say Happy Birthday to the boy." 

"Fuck off, all of you," Ellen spat. "You have some nerve! You wouldn’t give a damn if we starved, but now you come, almost battering in my door because suddenly you want to see my son, the son you couldn’t care less about? Pay me, you useless asshole." 

She threw the contents of her wine glass into his father’s face. 

"You whore," Smeden yelled and lunged to grab her but Birgit kicked his knee while Uncle Red yanked him back. 

"You’ll never see the kid again if you don’t behave," he implored Smeden. 

Smeden stared at Ellen with murderous hatred glinting in his eyes, his whole body trembling with rage, his nostrils flared. Then he shook off Red’s arm. 

"You’re only alive because of my kid, better remember that," he said calmly. 

"Okay, that’s enough, let’s go," Red said. 

His father looked like a rabid dog, Tonny thought. 

"Wait," Smeden held up a hand. He turned to look at Malte. "I have no issues with you. You’re working for Milo, ey? So what, you’re fucking Ellen, I don’t care. I’m glad. She’s a crazy, fucked up whore, like all women, and needs someone to handle her—but that’s your problem now. Not mine. Good luck with that. The kid, though, is mine." 

There was heavy silence as everyone looked at Malte holding Tonny. 

"Put him down and let him come to me, and I’ll forget today, ok?" 

Malte seemed to mull it over. Then he shifted Tonny’s weight so he could look him in the eyes. 

"You’re the man, Tonny," he whispered into Tonny’s ear, "wanna go to this guy? Or do you wanna stay with us?" 

His mum was leaning against Birgit who was still glaring hatefully at Red and Smeden. 

"Come on, Tonny, come to your father," Smeden said. 

Tonny looked from Malte to Ellen and Red. 

"I’m your father," Smeden hissed. He got impatient, Tonny could see his fingers twitching around the baseball bat. 

"I want to stay with Mor," Tonny said, barely audible. 

"What was that?" Smeden raised his bat. Again, it was Red who held him back. 

"You’re scaring the kid, ok?" he said. 

"You heard Tonny, fuck off," Birgit yelled again. 

"That’s it I’m calling the police," their neighbour screamed from upstairs. 

"Pernille, shut up, or I’ll come and shove your phone up your ass!" Birgit screamed into the hallway. 

"No kid of mine is scared," Smeden roared, struggling against Red’s hold. "No kid of mine is a coward! I won’t stand for it, I won’t let you turn my son into coward, Ellen, do you understand?" 

Malte squeezed Tonny once then gently lowered him to the floor. He walked past Ellen, Jonas and Birgit, right up to the front door. 

"Don’t you dare speak to your son like that," he said. He squared his shoulders, like a hero in a movie, then grabbed Smeden’s throat and pushed him back until he was leaning over the ironwork of the staircase. 

Tonny couldn’t see much, only his father’s legs kicking uselessly. He would have been scared in his father’s place. They were on the fifth floor after all. 

None of the men, Red or his father’s entourage dared to intervene. Finally, Malte let go of Smeden, and he collapsed, wheezing. Wordlessly, Red helped him up. 

"Come on, I’ll buy you a beer,” he said. Smeden didn’t reply, just gripped Red’s shoulder. Together they walked down the stairs, their men following them. 

Malte waited outside until they heard the big front doors downstairs clang shut, then he came back into the flat. 

"That was good of you!" Ellen moved to hug Malte but, drunk as she was, missed him and crashed into the umbrella stand instead. It didn’t deter her. "Eh, if only I’d met you before Smeden!"

Bitter tears of frustration and anger were rolling down her cheeks. "I hate him so much, that fucker." 

Malte hugged her until her sobs had died down, stroking her hair. 

"I don’t know what I would do without you," she sniffed and looked at him with puffy eyes. 

Birgit and Jonas helped her into the living room where they laid her on the sofa. The record had finished and Tonny could hear the needle scratching the vinyl. 

Most of Birgit’s and Ellen's friends decided it was time to go and left soon after, their last muttered words half-assed excuses about how it was late already and that the boy had to go to sleep soon. 

Tonny felt an urge to go to his mother and hold her. 

"Not now, Tonny," Ellen slurred, "just go and play with Malte. Mummy has a headache. She really needs some peace and quiet now, ok?" 

"Want some cake?" Malte asked and Tonny nodded, forcing himself to smile. 

Malte took him by the hand, leading him to the kitchen where the remains of his cake still stood on the kitchen counter. Someone had put their cigarette butts into it (judging from the colour of the lipstick it had probably been Ellen). Malte removed the butts gingerly, squeezing them into a half-empty beer can, and cut Tonny a big slice from the end that had no ash on it. 

Instead of sitting in the kitchen, Malte took the plate in one hand and Tonny’s hand in the other, then walked him into his room where he sat Tonny onto his bed. 

Tonny couldn’t recall ever having been alone with Malte before. It shouldn’t make him feel as uneasy as it did. Malte was a nice man and yet Tonny wished he could be in the living room with Birgit, Jonas and his mother instead. 

"Come on, let’s have some cake," Malte said and sat down beside Tonny. He looked down onto the plate, and sighed. "I forgot the fork.” 

Tonny said nothing. 

"Well, nothing to be done about it, I guess," Malte said cheerfully and scooped some cream onto his finger, holding it up to Tonny’s face. 

"Can’t we get a fork?" Tonny asked, his voice tiny and sounding too much like that of a little boy. 

Malte lowered his finger, looking exasperated. 

"Nah, we’re gonna make noise, and your mother needs quiet and peace now. You heard her. She’s been through so much today." 

Tonny hesitated and sucked his lower lip in between his teeth. He didn’t want to disturb his mother, yet he didn’t want to eat cake off Malte’s fingers either. It was weird. 

Malte stood up reluctantly. "I’ll go and get a fork, there should be one in the sink. Let’s just hope we won’t wake your mother." 

When he was at the door knob, Tonny quickly said, "No, it’s ok. I don’t want cake." 

Malte turned around. "You wanted cake before, so if you don’t want any now, it’s because you won’t eat it without a fork. So I’ll go and get your fork. Don’t worry about it Tonny." 

Tonny winced. He didn’t want to wake his mother or be a burden to Malte. He was just trying to be nice and he had looked so disappointed and tired when Tonny refused to eat without a fork. 

"I can eat it like this," Tonny said. 

Immediately, Malte relaxed. 

"It will be fun!" he said. He scooped up a bigger piece of cake and held it under Tonny’s nose. 

"Come on, it's good," he coaxed Tonny, still smiling. 

Tonny didn’t want to eat anything but he wanted to disappoint Malte even less. After all, he had defended and protected Tonny today. And his mother liked him. 

Whenever Malte was coming over she fussed over her hair more and put on more make-up than with the other customers and last week he had fixed the washing machine. 

He parted his lips and hesitantly licked the cream off Malte’s finger. 

Malte was panting slightly. He looked at Tonny’s lips, kneading his crotch. He scooted closer to Tonny and kissed his forehead. 

"You’re a good boy," he said. "You’re a real grown-up. You’ll make your mother proud." 

Malte hugged Tonny and, relieved, he melted into the embrace. He wasn’t quite sure why, but he didn’t like what had happened. There was a strange tension lurking underneath every single one of Malte’s movements. He was being weird. Malte wanted something, Tonny was sure, but what it was he couldn’t begin to fathom. All he knew was that Malte seemed pleased now, happy with Tonny. All was well now. 

Then Tonny realised, Malte had slipped his hand underneath his pyjama top. He rubbed small circles into his back. His mother did that too sometimes but it felt different with her. 

Tonny tensed and fear curled in his stomach. 

Malte didn’t stop moving his hand over his back. 

He should have gone with his father, he realised, now that it was too late. His father would never have done that. Tonny had made the wrong choice and he would pay for it. He thought about getting up and running to his mother but she would be angry at him for waking her. She would be angry at him for not being nice to Malte. 

Maybe he could just casually get up, maybe he could pretend go to the bathroom but as soon as he moved, Malte gripped his wrist. 

"You’re not leaving me, are you?" he asked. "I’d be so sad if you left me alone!" 

Tonny swallowed thickly, avoiding looking into Malte’s eyes which were dark and shiny, too large in his thin face. He wanted the sweet, funny Malte back, not this stranger. 

"Hey, what are you doing, you two?" 

Birgit stood there, leaning against the doorframe. Tonny suppressed the urge to run to her and remained on the bed, frozen. 

"I’m keeping Tonny company," Malte said, "he was a bit shaken after the whole Smeden thing." 

"Are you okay now?" Birgit asked. There was a curious expression in her eyes, and in that moment Tonny realised that she knew. Whatever was wrong with Malte—she knew. 

"Jonas brought coke. There are some lines for you left," she said. Her eyes moved back and forth between Malte and Tonny. 

"I’m okay. And you shouldn’t talk like that in front of Tonny," Malte chided her. 

"Don’t worry about Tonny. He knows we like to sniff the coffee table. Go on, Malte, it’s not like you to say no to free coke." 

Birgit’s smile was lopsided, and did not reach her eyes. 

Slowly, Malte withdrew his hand from Tonny’s back. He got up, discreetly adjusting his jeans. 

"You’re right," he said, "a line after this mess would be nice." 

Laying a large hand onto Tonny’s shoulder, he said: "Get some rest, boy." 

He walked past Birgit and a moment later Tonny could hear him joke with Jonas in the living room. 

Birgit sat down beside him. She didn’t say anything for a while and Tonny didn’t dare open his mouth. 

"Malte is a nice guy," she finally said, "just a bit crazy. He loves your mother, so be a good boy, ok?” 

She got up and looked for something in the drawers. Finally she returned to the bed with a notebook and a pen. She scrawled a number into it. Fascinated, Tonny watched her write, eyes drawn to her fuchsia, claw-like fingernails. 

"You know how to use the phone? How to make phone calls? Did Ellen teach you that?” 

Again, Tonny nodded, proud that he knew. 

"When he gets funny…you can call me, okay?” She searched for something in her pockets and pulled out a pack of cigarettes with a triumphant little cry. She lit a cigarette and inhaled a few times before blowing out a thick curl of smoke. Her eyes were glassy. 

"You can always come over to my place, you know that?" She hugged Tonny. "When I’m not at home, you can still come. My key is under the flowerpot, the one with the sunflower, do you understand? Go there whenever you need to." 

She hugged Tonny a second time then pushed him down into bed and pulled a blanket over him. 

"Now get some sleep!" 

**London, 2004**

"I can’t believe I’m being exposed to all this bullshit.” 

Tonny blinks. 

Ian, the guy he has been working with on and off the last two days, lights a cigarette and points at the naked, oiled bodies gyrating against each other on the dancefloor. 

"Not getting paid enough for this shit." 

Tonny doesn’t—like in most situations—really know what to say. Roberto’s advice to speak as little as possible is the best advice he has ever received. 

"What were you thinking about?" 

Ian’s jaw muscles are working relentlessly, a sign he’s had some speed. 

Tonny shakes his head. 

"You seem really stressed out. Are you okay, mate?” 

Tonny nods curtly, then slowly looks away as if bored, a trick he has learned from Roberto. Ian gives up trying to talk to him and, instead, pivots on his heels restlessly, like a ballerina, before Charlie hisses at him to stand still. 

Sometimes Tonny remembers. 

It’s not like… real, actual memories. It's more like disjointed images, fragments of not-dreams floating before his inner eye but he can’t piece together no matter how hard he tries. 

Every time these memories come up, Tonny tries to think of something else. Only weak boys cry over their bad childhoods. Only losers. 

From across the room Alfie signals him, and Tonny immediately understands he wants a drink. He gets a Hendricks and tonic and brings it to his table, with a slice of cucumber, his favourite drink at the moment. Alfie takes the glass, then gestures for Tonny to stay. 

The DJ cranks the bass up, as the techno he is playing gets successively darker. 

Tonny would rather go back to Ian, join the boys at the other end of the dance floor but he can’t disobey Alfie, especially as it is seen as some kind of an honour to be so close to Alfie. 

So he stays, standing as straight as possible and trying not to look too closely at what is happening before his eyes. 

Roberto is there, dressed in a corset, wearing stockings and his high heeled platform boots. 

He doesn’t want to see his friend like this. And Roberto, he is his friend. 

His only friend. 

And he’s a good friend, a good man. Has helped him, talked to him, like a real friend would, but then sometimes Roberto is like a female. 

He’s known plenty of boys like Roberto, but they were different. They weren’t his friend. What Roberto is doing is wrong. It’s gross and wrong. 

Tonny shifts. White light pours over Roberto, as he arches his back, showing his ass off like a bitch in heat. 

Why does he do that? Can’t he do something decent? Maybe Tonny can help him get a normal job. 

Roberto is crawling on the floor, oil and glitter on his arms and on his face. Tonny can see every muscle shifting. Roberto is so lithe, yet soft. He even has a tiny bit of cellulitis on his lush bum (not that Tonny will ever tell him. Tonny wants to live a long, fulfilled life after all), and his legs are so long and slender and beautiful. His chest is white and soft too, not a hair on it, and Tonny keeps thinking he looks just like a girl. 

Roberto even smells like a girl, like peaches and sunshine and sugar. 

Not that Tonny cares. 

Just sometimes Roberto moves so close to him, it can’t be helped. It’s not that Tonny seeks out Roberto’s proximity. 

Roberto is between Alfie’s legs now, nuzzling his crotch while Harvey watches from where he’s sitting at the table, snorting coke with a slim, pretentious steel tube. 

Ian, who has made his way through the crowd to stand beside Tonny again, jabs a bony elbow into his side. 

"Bet it has his initials engraved," he chuckles, and Tonny can’t help but snort. True, Harvey probably wears condoms with his name in some fancy font printed on them. 

Alfie shoots Ian a sharp glance as if he has heard (which is impossible, what with the music blasting from the speakers) and Ian straightens up. 

Harvey gets up and pulls Roberto away from Alfie’s cock. They exchange a glance and then both lift Roberto in a smooth motion onto the round table. Roberto reaches for Harvey, slowly opens his zip and takes out his cock, then begins to suck it. 

The expression of absolute bliss on Roberto’s face, as if he’s ravenous for cum, disgusts Tonny. 

Tonny adjusts his trousers, shifts his weight. 

Roberto looks at him, in this weird half-lidded way. He winks and changes his position, spreading his legs to show off his pink, shaved and already lubed hole. 

He starts fingering himself, moaning so loudly Tonny thinks he can hear him over the music. The way he arches upwards, pinching his own nipples is too much. 

"Fucking hell," Ian says beside him. 

The first time Tonny saw Roberto, he thought he was a beautiful girl. He would have fucked him then. 

But not now. Now they are friends. They have gotten high together, shared takeout, watched movies and done a lot of other stuff you just don’t do with someone you fuck. 

Tonny has principles. 

At times, when he’s very drunk and high, he jerks off and gets distracted because suddenly there’s Roberto insinuating himself into his fantasies. Whenever it happens, he tries his best to think of other things. 

A few other men have joined the show. Tonny has seen most of them before. They either work for Harvey and Alfie or for Dave. 

Dave has been visiting the brothers often, and as far as Tonny can tell, they get on well. 

Tonny isn’t important enough to be told what it is that requires Dave, Harvey and Alfie to meet so often lately, but it seems to be good business. Harvey and Alfie are often in a good mood after having done business with Dave. 

Despite Roberto being strange about him, he seems to be okay. He chats with everyone. Is friendly to everyone, even to a newcomer like Tonny. 

As far as he knows, Dave also works as some kind of recruiter, bringing in new people, many of them freshly released from prison. They’re young, mean and lean. And they all have the look of trained, sleek rottweilers, ready to be unleashed and wreak havoc. 

Tonny wonders if prison is where Roberto knows him from. He also wonders how Harvey manages to last with the way Roberto is deep throating his cock, but finally he cums, pulling out and shooting a load onto Roberto’s face. 

Harvey tucks himself in, then sits down again and continues to sip his whisky and watch. 

Alfie snaps his fingers at two of his men. They follow his command like the well-trained dogs they are and take their place around the table. 

One of them hands Roberto a crinkled tissue but he laughs and shakes his head before licking up the cum threatening to drip down his lips. 

Tonny doesn't like how these men are looking at Roberto, with their teeth clenched and eyes dark. They want him and Tonny’s stomach churns. It's obvious in the way they nervously flex their fingers, as if they can barely keep themselves from reaching out to take what they want. 

He’s not exactly smart, Tonny knows that, not like Roberto who owns all these books, out of which he sometimes reads aloud when they laze on Roberto's sofa, but Tonny knows lust when he sees it. 

When these men look at Roberto, they look just like those his mother brought home sometimes and who were always gone come the next morning. 

Tonny shakes his head, pushing the memory of his mother as far away as he can, and straightens up, hands behind his back. 

Meanwhile, Roberto has gotten rid of most of the cum on his face and is writhing on the table, still fingering himself while Harvey, Alfie and half a dozen other men watch. Some are palming themselves through their trousers, others have already taken out their cocks and are jerking lazily. 

Tonny scrunches up his nose. He doesn't want to see dicks of other men and he doesn't want to see the leering expressions on their faces either. 

In the end, desperate and not knowing where else to look, he stares at Roberto and watches him as he puts on a show. 

It's obscene, the way his fingers move in and out of his pink hole, his inner thighs glistening with lube and sweat, and Tonny has to swallow the lump forming in his throat. 

For a fleeting moment and without meaning to, Tonny lets his gaze wander, settling between Roberto's legs where his cock is curving against his belly. 

He hasn't touched it once while fingering himself and yet he’s hard and leaking. Tonny wonders how he does it. Surely, only faggots get a hard-on from shoving their fingers up their butt and Roberto is no faggot. He's just doing his job. 

A deep grunt coming from his side pulls him out of his thoughts and, embarrassed, Tonny averts his eyes and sneaks a glance at the others instead. 

Nobody says a word but some of them are panting hard, cursing underneath their breaths whenever Roberto arches off the table and moans. All eyes are on him, but nobody dares to move in close enough to touch Roberto. Tonny has a fleeting suspicion that they’re waiting for something and he turns to look at Alfie and Harvey. 

They’re watching Roberto with detached fondness—like one might watch an expensive pet—and sip their whisky. 

Soon, Roberto looks downright desperate and he turns around on his hand and knees, presenting himself and his stretched hole as best as he can. 

His lips are moving but Tonny can't make out what he’s saying. If he had to make a guess, he'd say Roberto is begging. 

After some time has passed, Alfie shows mercy and snaps his fingers. 

Immediately, the men spring into action. Like a pack of wolves they pounce on Roberto. It's a race to who can get their cock into his mouth or hole first. They’re none too gentle when they push and pull at him to get him into position but Roberto doesn't mind. 

Tonny can't suppress a shudder when one guy whose name he doesn't know grabs Roberto by his long hair and shoves his dick down his throat. 

It's remarkable he doesn't gag, doesn't even flinch, and Tonny watches in horrified fascination as he starts to suck, his eyes fluttering close in apparent bliss. His throat is working around the cock pushing deeper and deeper. Tonny can see it even from where he’s standing, but Roberto doesn't seem bothered. On the contrary, he sucks and licks at the hard flesh with a vigour Tonny has never seen before. The women he has fucked have never been this enthusiastic. 

It's messy—saliva is dripping down Roberto's chin, mixed up with precum—and the men are enjoying the spectacle, edging Roberto on by screaming obscenities loud enough to drown out the bass of the music. 

Two others are jerking themselves off while they watch Roberto deepthroat their colleague. A third guy is rubbing his thick cock against the cleft of Roberto's ass. 

Roberto gets the hint and spreads his legs wider, shaking his ass to entice the man even further, pressing his hole against the shaft. 

He doesn't waste a second and pushes inside Roberto with one powerful thrust. Roberto is screaming, almost choking on the cock he's still sucking, but he doesn't try to get away. 

It's all part of the show, Tonny thinks. It's obvious these men like it rough and Roberto is giving them the illusion of an ultimately futile resistance. 

Show or not, Tonny doesn't like how they touch him, how they manhandle him. The guy fucking Roberto with brutal, sharp thrusts is not even wearing a condom and Tonny can feel bile rising in the back of his throat at the sight of his veiny cock sliding in and out of his friend. 

This is all wrong, he thinks, and throws a questioning glance at Harvey and Alfie. Do they enjoy passing Roberto around to all their lackeys? Do they get off on watching others fuck him? 

Tangled up in the mess of his own thoughts he only notices that Alfie is returning his gaze when Ian elbows him in the side. 

He sputters, trying to catch his breath. Out of the corner of his eyes he can see that Alfie is laughing. 

Warmth floods his cheeks and suddenly Tonny is glad for the dim light that makes the blush spreading over the bridge of his nose near invisible. 

Alfie, still chuckling, returns his attention back to Roberto. 

The two men fucking Roberto’s arse and mouth are close, Tonny thinks once he has regained his composure, and he grinds his teeth. Their faces are red and sweaty, their hands gripping Roberto so tight it’ll surely leave bruises on his pale skin. 

If Roberto is bothered by it then he knows how to hide it well. His eagerness is almost too much, his enthusiasm all too obvious in the way he moves with their uncoordinated trusts, hips rolling every time the man pushes into him, his throat working around the dick of the other. Tonny wonders if it's real, if Roberto really likes this. 

The two won't last much longer like this and Tonny wants nothing more than for it to end, wants to turn around and leave and take Roberto with him. 

It's impossible, he knows, especially with the way Alfie's gaze flickers to where he is standing from time to time. Maybe it's a test. And if it is then Tonny has no intention of failing it. 

So he forces his body to still and curls his hands into fists, his nails digging into the flesh of his palms while he waits for it to end. 

Just when he thinks he can't take the slapping sounds and moans any longer, Harvey, who has made himself comfortable on the big sofa next to his brother, snaps his fingers. 

The frantic movements of the two men cease and they pull out of Roberto, the expression on their faces downright desperate. 

Roberto on the other hand doesn't seem all that affected, he turns around on his back without prompting from either one of the brothers and spreads his legs. 

Confused, Tonny looks on as the two men take themselves into their hands and start to jerk off until they both freeze and cum—nearly simultaneously—all over Roberto's chest and face. 

When the sticky substance hits his skin, Roberto keens, as if the feeling of cum all over his body is enough to drive him to ecstasy. 

By the time Harvey and Alfie's lackeys are done, Roberto is covered in it. It's sticking to his chest, some drops are clinging to his dark hair. He catches his breath, sprawled out on the table, beautiful even in his debauchery. 

Tonny bites down on his tongue, willing the thoughts of Roberto as beautiful back into the darkest recess of his mind. 

For a moment he thinks it’s over, that Roberto will get up and gather his clothes, take a much needed shower and leave, his work done for tonight. Tonny's hopes are mercilessly crushed when one of the men who have only watched so far, approaches Roberto, curls an arm around his slim waist and heaves him over his shoulder. 

There’s no resistance coming from Roberto, merely an indignant yelp that provokes a round of raucous laughter from the assembled men. He's carried over to where Alfie and Harvey are sitting and is unceremoniously dropped between them. 

Tonny's heart sinks when Harvey leans back and spreads his legs. 

Roberto, despite the exhaustion he must be feeling, goes to work immediately and presses his cum-stained face against's Harvey's crotch, nuzzling it affectionately for a while before pulling the zipper of Harvey's pants down with his teeth. 

It's a neat little trick that makes Tonny's stomach tighten with unbidden arousal. 

Unlike him, Harvey remains unaffected, his expression neutral, almost polite and if not for his obvious erection Tonny would have thought he was bored. 

Alfie makes no secret of his excitement. He shifts in his seat and slaps Roberto's wriggling ass, grabbing the tender flesh with both hands and pulling his cheeks apart to expose his reddened hole. 

Alfie pushes three fingers at once inside.

Roberto whimpers at the intrusion, Tonny can hear it even from where he’s standing. Harvey's cock momentarily forgotten, Roberto arches his back and lifts his hips higher. 

Alfie laughs at this display of neediness and even Harvey's face graces a rare smile. 

Together, the brothers make quick work of Roberto's corset. 

Soon, Roberto is completely bared to the feverish gaze of the gathered crowd, save for the thin stockings and his obscene heels. 

It's disconcerting in a way Tonny can't explain, to see Roberto so vulnerable and exposed, surrounded by all these men clad in dark suits. 

Harvey reaches out and pinches Roberto's nipples, pulling him closer like this and whispers something into his ear that makes Roberto's eyes go wide. 

Tonny doesn't need to wait long to find out what it was that Harvey has told him. 

With a curt nod, Roberto pulls away from Alfie, throwing an apologetic look over his shoulder as his fingers glide out of him and swings his leg over Harvey's lap. One hand he keeps on Harvey's shoulder for support, with the other he holds his cock. 

Harvey is thicker than the man who had Roberto before, but the easy smile on Roberto's face never falters when he slowly sinks down. Soon enough, Roberto is completely seated in Harvey's lap, his hole stretched around the veiny cock. 

It doesn't surprise Tonny when Harvey leans back, both arms stretched out on the backrest, and lets Roberto do all the work. 

His movements are slow at first, languid rolls of his hips accompanied by breathy moans and Harvey seems content with letting Roberto set the pace. Unlike his brother, he understands the concept of delayed gratification. Occasionally, he touches Roberto, his ringed fingers roaming over exposed skin, caressing his narrow hips, then twisting a red nipple. 

Roberto arches into the touch, mouth falling open, lashes fluttering. Harvey’s touch is almost loving and Tonny can feel his cheeks heating up again. 

It's Alfie who breaks the illusion of tenderness by walking up behind Roberto, bottle of lube in one hand, and pushes him down until he's chest to chest with Harvey. As if on cue, Roberto reaches behind and grabs his ass cheeks, spreading them as best as he can, exposing even more of himself in the process. 

Tonny can tell from the way it all seems like a practiced dance that it isn't the first time they’re doing this. There's a routine to Roberto's movements that has nothing to do with him being used to this kind of work. 

How often have Harvey and Alfie have had him like that already? 

There’s little time to ponder this particular question and, to his secret shame, Tonny is too easily distracted by Roberto's moans and cries as Harvey fucks into him while Alfie pours more lube over his ass, watching it drip down between his cheeks and over his brother's dick. 

He's hard in his boxers, Tonny realizes with cold terror, hard and leaking because his best and only friend is getting fucked by his bosses right in front of his eyes. 

His mind is screaming at him to get out of here, to turn his back on it all and be gone, job and money be damned. Then Roberto turns and looks at him over his shoulder. 

Tonny can't move, he’s rooted to the spot. There is nothing he can do but watch as Alfie props one knee up on the edge of the sofa, angling his hips just so and pushes his cock inside Roberto, right alongside that of his brother. 

The feverish expression on Roberto's face is washed away, replaced by what’s quite obviously pain and he pulls his lip in between his teeth, biting down to keep from crying out. When that isn't enough to keep the small sobs at bay, he presses his face into the crook of Harvey's neck. 

Harvey whispers something into Roberto's ear and brushes his hand through his tangled curls but he doesn't tell his brother to stop and he doesn't pull out of Roberto. Neither does Alfie, he pushes and pushes, ignoring the tremble in Roberto's thighs and his muffled moans, until he's all the way inside of him. 

They don't give him much time to adjust to the sensation and all tenderness that might have been there before is gone by the time Alfie has decided that he has waited long enough and starts to pull out before slamming back inside. 

The pace he sets is far from being gentle and Roberto's cries walk the line between pleasure and pain. 

Tonny feels like he should do something, anything, but his mind is blank, filled with nothing but the noises Roberto, Harvey and Alfie make. 

A coward, a complete and utter coward, that's what he is. Weak and useless, just as his father always said. 

He balls his hands into fists. Roberto wouldn't want him to make a spectacle of himself, he argues with his bad conscience. This is a job for Roberto just as much as it is a job for him. 

Another outcry makes him wince and he looks up to see that both Harvey and Alfie are moving, pushing in and out of Roberto's body in an alternating rhythm. 

Soon, Tonny tells himself, it will be over soon and then they can go home and won’t have to think of this anymore. Roberto will take one of his lengthy baths, using up all of the hot water again, and then drop down next to Tonny on the sofa where he will fall asleep while watching one of the shitty action movies Tonny insists on buying. 

He doesn't want to see Roberto like that, his own throbbing dick be damned. 

Nobody else seems to care much for Roberto's whimpers and cries. On the contrary, they watch with eager expressions on their faces, inching ever so slowly closer, hoping to get a better look at Roberto. 

At least no one else tries to touch Roberto, even though they quite obviously want to. Fear is holding them back and they content themselves by watching and jerking off to the sight of Roberto getting fucked open by two cocks at once. Tonny is secretly glad for it. 

A sudden movement to his left makes him jump a little and when he turns he's staring into an all too familiar face. 

It's Dave. 

He winks, and then pushes past Tonny and saunters over to the sofa. 

Nobody dares to stop him and the brothers acknowledge him with curt nods. It's as good as an invitation and Dave doesn't need to be told twice. He reaches out and runs a hand down Roberto's sweaty back. 

At first, Roberto leans into the touch like a kitten but as he lifts his head, dark curls hanging over his eyes and looks into Dave's face, he freezes. 

His blue eyes are wide, the irises nothing but two small dots, and his hands cling to Harvey's shoulders, his whole body pressed against the other man as if he hopes to melt into him like that, as if he hopes to disappear if only he’d tried hard enough. 

Tonny can hear Dave laugh. 

There’s a strange, faraway look in Roberto’s eyes. Tonny’s friend, Frank, looked liked that just before he died. The look of somebody who realised that they have fucked everything up beyond repair. Frank knew he would die. In his last days, he knew there was no other way it could end. He was walking around like a zombie, an empty shell of a man. 

That’s what Roberto looks like now, like somebody who knows he has no choices left. That all there is to do is to go with the motions. 

Dave is standing in front of the sofa now, chatting with Alfie about something Tonny can’t hear, smiling down at Roberto. 

He isn’t good with these things, with thinking and making big decisions, which is why he’s glad to have Roberto as a friend, who is smart and quick-witted but something bad has happened between Dave and Roberto. That’s all he needs to know. 

In Tonny’s opinion, Roberto is one of the strongest, most resilient people he has met, brave and defiant in his own way. He hates seeing Roberto like that. 

Dave has moved his hand from Roberto’s back up to his neck, stroking his hair and pushing his fingers through the curls. 

Alfie, oblivious, keeps talking to Dave, patting Roberto’s bum, kneading the soft flesh. 

And here’s the thing. There’s nothing Tonny can do. 

Alfie is his boss. And he’s friends with Dave. Tonny needs this job and he can’t fuck this up. And it’s dangerous to get on the brothers’ bad side. 

Roberto’s lips are moving. Tonny doesn’t think he’s aware of it. He has begun to sway, like in a daze, and it freaks Tonny out. He has never seen this Roberto before. It’s as if this isn’t Roberto but an empty shell wearing his face. 

Dave pushes Roberto’s head down and slaps his ass. Roberto shudders. 

"Thought I taught you better," Dave laughs, loud enough to be audible over the music. Harvey and Alfie exchange a look. If Tonny would have blinked he would have missed it, because in the next moment Alfie is laughing too and Harvey is looking away. 

Maybe Harvey and Alfie can't afford to upset Dave either, Tonny begins to think. Maybe that's why Dave barges in here, using their fucktoy as he pleases—to show everyone that he has nothing to fear from the brothers. 

Roberto pushes his ass down and twists around so that he can reach over and unzip Dave’s trousers, pulling out his cock. Dave combs strong fingers through his locks, seemingly in an affectionate way but Roberto grimaces in pain. 

Ian and some other bloke push in front of Tonny. The whole room seems to be drawn towards Roberto who is bathed in the stark white beam of one of the headlights on the ceiling. 

It’s surreal in a way, Tonny finds, as if Roberto is alone in the this world and the men around him are just shadows, shrouded by the darkness of Justin’s lounge. 

Out of the corners of his eyes Tonny can see Frankie, Roberto’s mate. He too seems weirded out by the scene and by Roberto’s strange behaviour. 

Dave laughs, and begins to fuck Roberto’s mouth. Harvey, maybe a tad tired from tonight’s games, leans back and motions for one of the men to bring him a drink. He gingerly sips his Gin Tonic while his brother and Dave fuck Roberto’s ass and mouth. Roberto lets his happen, his eyes unfocused, big, void of any emotion. And no sound, no whimper or gasp passes his lips anymore. 

Just then, Ian takes another step to the left to have a better view. Alfie, momentarily distracted, exchanges jokes with a guy who has come to stand close next to him and doesn’t pay attention to what is going on on the sofa. 

It’s in this moment that Tonny comes to a decision. In a way the opportunity presents itself. It’s now or never: He pushes Ian and his friend against Alfie who loses his balance and almost falls onto his ass. It’s a comical sight, Tonny can’t deny it: Alfie with his hard cock still hanging from his open trousers, looking like a fish out of water. Roberto doesn’t seem to care that there is one guy less fucking him. He keeps moving on top of Harvey, tongue simultaneously licking over the tip of Dave’s prick. 

Harvey and Dave aren’t gone far enough to not notice that something isn’t quite right. Dave pulls out of Roberto’s mouth, an expression of mild annoyance on his face, and Harvey lifts Roberto up by the hips and unceremoniously tosses him aside. He bounces a little on the cushions, but doesn’t get up and away as he should. 

It’s not enough, Tonny decides and, after muttering a silent apology, shoves another guy who has been too busy jerking off to notice what is happening, into Harvey. 

He also tosses his shot of vodka over Ian’s head, just for good measure, and Ian starts yelling, his eyes squint shut. Alfie, furious, decks him without hesitation. In return, Ian lands a hit on Alfie’s head. Another guy, probably a friend of his, doesn’t seem to know Alfie very well, poor sod, and tries to step in: "Hey mate, you shouldn’t have done that!" 

Ian swings around and shuts his friend up with a fist. He staggers backwards and lands on a bunch of Harvey’s men, all of them drunk and high on crappy speed. As they land their punches on him, a glass flies out of someone’s hand and lands on Dave’s face. 

And so it begins. 

Within a few moments, the entire room has dissolved into a brawl. 

Tonny ducks in between the fighting and screaming lads and pulls Roberto from the sofa. After a quick glance at his platform heels, he gathers him up into his arms and carries him, grabbing the corset and the hotpants he had worn earlier. 

He has to duck again when someone throws a beer bottle across the room. 

Roberto is limp in his arms, much like a lifeless doll, and his head lolls onto his chest. Tightening the hold on him, Tonny makes his way to the exit but, just before he can reach it, he stops—there, right in front of the exit, is Dave, punching one of Alfie’s guys. He looks drunk and high as fuck. There’s no way of getting past him without getting caught. 

There’s a loud crash, and Dave crumbles to the floor. 

Over his unconscious form stands Frankie, broken bottle of tonic still in hand. 

"I always wanted to do that, to be honest," he says with grim satisfaction. 

He looks at Roberto. "What the fuck is wrong with him?" 

Tonny shrugs. 

"Sick," he says, and Frankie nods, as if that’s explanation enough. He ushers them through the exit, urging Tonny on with impatient huffing noises. 

"Just fuck off already, Harvey will call off the fun any minute now." 

Before he can get out one of Dave’s new guys charges at Frankie and, to return the favour, Tonny swirls around in a neat little pirouette, managing to swing Roberto’s legs so that the heels of his boots hit the guy in the face. He stumbles off into the other direction, cradling his nose. Tonny doesn’t waste another second and dives through the exit, down the hallway and out of the house. 

He throws Roberto into the backseat of Alfie’s Prius, then backs out of Justin’s driveway and onto the road. 

Roberto doesn’t say a word. He looks out of the window, eyes unfocused and hands pressed into his lap. From time to time he nods as if someone is talking to him. At some point he laughs. 

Tonny has seen this kind of behaviour before. Sometimes people just break. He just wouldn’t have thought it could happen to Roberto. 

Then Roberto suddenly says, "your jacket!" in his usual bored and slightly condescending tone and Tonny is glad to hear Roberto say something—anything. With shaking fingers Roberto laces himself into the corset, wriggles into his hotpants. 

He blinks, looking down at his jacket, trying to see what is wrong with it. 

"I'm almost naked, you idiot. It's fucking freezing. Now give me your jacket," Roberto says impatiently. As he arches from the seat in order to button his shorts close, Tonny looks at the roll of soft flesh over the waistband of the pants, then looks away again. Just keeps his eyes on the road. 

When he finally spots a taxi stand he pulls over and parks in the lane. He slips out of his jacket and passes it to Roberto. Roberto pats and searches the pockets of the jacket, softly cursing until he finds the crumpled pack of cigs in the breastpocket. He lights one, passes it to Tonny, then lights one for himself, flicking ash into the car. As Tonny opens the door, Roberto says: "Did you know that my mother tried to kill me?" 

Tonny grips the door handle a little tighter. 

"You’re alive," he says, feeling utterly helpless. 

"She thought I was a demon or something. Some Rosemary’s Baby shit." 

Tonny can only shake his head. 

"Go home, Roberto," he says. "Take a bath. You can use up the bubbles. I have curry in the fridge." 

Roberto gets out of the car and Tonny walks him to the cab, even opens the door for him. 

He pushes a wad of cash into Roberto’s cold, sweaty hands and Roberto automatically clutches it with an iron grip. 

"I have to go back to Justin," Tonny says. 

He doesn’t want to leave. Roberto looks so lost and alone but he has no other choice. 

"Be safe," he tells him. 

Roberto laughs, loud and hysterical, as if Tonny has made the greatest joke he has ever heard. 

Before Tonny can say anything else, Roberto pulls the door shut and the cab drives off. 


End file.
